An Ugly Roadside Dresser Turned a Lovely Pink Ombre

 A friend of mine needed a dresser for her daughter, so when I found this ugly one in someone's garbage pile, I snatched it up.  It was missing the drawers on the bottom but I thought it could still be functional anyway.  This turned out to be a nightmare dresser!  Some found on the side of the road are gems, this one....well, it is well made but each drawer fit only in it's particular spot, the previous owner had painted over the dark stain so most of that was peeling.

Sometimes I sand my project to prep them for primer and sometimes I use a sanding de-glosser. If I had used the sanding de-glosser on this one, it would have saved me days, DAYS, of work!  

It was all peeling white with black underneath to start with.

Grrrr. The sanding made the finish on the drawers uneven, so I had to revert to scraping off layers of paint and stain.

Cleaning out the inside.

Finally, the four days of peeling paint and stain off the drawer fronts is over and primer is applied.

Another friend had just painted her daughter's room pink and let me use some of her paint since the friend who needed this dresser was hoping for hot pink.

I decided to join the whole ombre movement and just used my kids' red poster paint to tint the light pink to four different colors.

If the dresser had of allowed for the drawer to move to other slots, I would have put the top drawers on the bottom.  But I actually like this - maybe even better than what it could have looked like.  The baskets are from the Dollar Tree. They were red, but I painted them hot pink.  If the family doesn't like the baskets, I thought the bottom could have been used for shoes.  I wonder what other uses there could be for that bottom section....hmmm.

In the end I conquered the dresser!  And it really turned out nicely. But next time, I hope to be a little more observant about what is under any peeling paint.  If it's something oil-based, I'll probably just do a light sanding to get the peeling paint off, and finish of with sanding de-glosser.  It would save days of work!

Hanging Earring Organizer (to match the Thrifty & Conveneient Necklace Holder)

Remember this necklace holder?  Well, after getting my necklaces organized, I felt like I needed a place for my earrings.  There are many great ideas all over Pinterest (i.e.- this cute and well done one).  I liked using vintage printer drawers to store those tiny accessories...but who has the money for a printer drawer?
  So I took off to search my trusty thrift store and found the next best thing; remember the trinket holders from the 80s and 90s that hung on walls and collected dust on all your little knick-knacks?  you know, with tiny animals and stuff from trips? Yeah, those.

Here's what I like about them: they already have devices on the back making them ready to hang on a wall, they are a little smaller than your average printer drawer and they are more likely to be in a person's budget.  I got my first one for $1.  But after finishing one, I realized that I needed another to hold all my earrings; so I found the other one at a garage sale for a quarter!

The expense is in the eye-hooks (about $7 for all three packs that I bought), the paper to allow it to match my necklace organizer (still was only about $1), and the paint (except I used leftover spray paint from other projects - so that was really no cost.  Making both earring organizers a little under $10!


So, here's what I did:

1. Found the trinket holder.  (I actually found them about a year apart so it turned out that one is slightly smaller than the other and they are a slightly different color of white - but you can't tell too much when they're hanging on my wall.)  

 

2. Spray painted the holder.  I also spray painted the eye hooks but I must have forgotten to take a picture of them - whoops!  They do great with primer and then to match my necklace holder and my beachy theme, I painted them oil-rubbed bronze and plain white.

3. Next I matched a drill bit to the size of the screw part of the eye-hook and drilled really slowly (so the bit wouldn't go through to the other side since the wood was only 1/4 in thick)

4. Then, Modge Podge was used to place craft paper into each section desired. (no picture here either - sorry)

5. Let it dry, screw the eye-hooks into place and with the wall hanging thingys that are already there, hang on the wall. 

 

(yup, I have lots of silver and blue)