Chest Of Drawers

Chest Of Drawers (or as Dave always says “Chester Drawers”)

Finished Chest of Drawers

Tools Needed

• Paint Stripper
• Scraper
• Electric Sander
• Paint Brushes
• Mini Rollers
• Sandpaper

Process

This was my first proper furniture project so it was a bit of guess-work and lots of experimentation. I was given this chest of drawers by my boyfriend who was about to chuck it in a skip, it came from a theatre changing room and I really have no idea how old it was. It was an interesting yellow colour and when stripped it back, an even more interesting sludge green. It took hours of stripping and sanding and in the end I’ll be honest I gave up! I have suspicions that the green was possibly lead based paint so I left that alone and used a primer over the top.

I wanted to distress the furniture after paining so put on a good layer of primer and then rubbed wax over areas that might naturally wear over time. Some experimentation took place around the handles as they were made of solid plastic and this wouldn’t rub back well later on (I could have changed them for wooden ones but i like the fact that they were original), to create a fake wooden effect to sand back to I coated these in a brown acrylic paint and then painted the whole peace with a Light Grey Eggshell. The finishing touch was to use some coarse sandpaper over the areas I had waxed to give it the aged look.

Thoughts

Over all I’m really happy with it, especially as it was my first go. The paint didn’t stick to the handles very well so if it comes round again I will do more research to get that right. All in all very happy and kicked of a new passion for upcycling second-hand furniture and making it my own.

‘ Onwards and upwards ‘