Everyone has one of those pieces of furniture that just never seems to go away. It’s not special. It’s not irreplaceable. It’s just… sort of there. In my case it’s a five-drawer dresser that I acquired in college. It’s traveled to multiple apartments, my first home and now decades later it’s still in our home and my daughter uses it in her room. It’s a basic white on white, bare bones, solid wood dresser. And finally, that’s all about to change. Sort of.
My daughter can’t (more like won’t want to) go without a dresser for her clothes for the weeks and weeks it typically takes me to complete a project. So I partnered with my friends from Krylon Spray Paint for a speedy upcycle to this tired old piece of furniture!
*This project has been sponsored by Krylon paints!
Furniture Flipping Prep
The dresser is currently a satin white with a ton of dings and scrapes from years of wear and tear. Even though I’m going to be repainting it with Krylon Fusion All-In One Spray Paint with Matte White, there is still some cosmetic prep I’m going to run through. If the surface was undamaged, I could paint the whole thing with the Fusion All-In One Spray Paint and have no worries about coverage or adhesion (Krylon Fusion All-In One Spray Paint does not require sanding or prep!). You know, when you paint something and then barely touch it, the whole surface peels off? That’s not a problem here.
What is a problem is years and years and layers and layers of paint. So I’m going to hit the trouble areas of this piece of furniture with a couple grits of sandpaper finishing up with a 220 grit or higher with a smooth to the touch finish, removing several years of paint in the process. If there are any deeper gouges, I can always go in and fill those with paintable wood putty and then sand it smooth as well. Same goes for replacing the hardware. If I want to move the holes, I’ll patch and sand those until we’re ready to paint!
One thing to watch for if you’re flipping a bargain buy piece of furniture is if the surface is a veneer. It’s a thin layer of wood laminated to the surface that can cause all sorts of problems if you sand through it. Often, you’ll find damaged veneer pieces that most people don’t want to tackle, but veneer can be matched and patched if you’re looking for a challenge.
My original plan was the strip the top of this dresser and stain it… but the veneer had already been sanded through by someone else on the corner here, then painted over to hide it. Looks like I’ll be painting the top again as I must call a design audible.
Paint And Go!
If you’re like me, you’ll remember how awful spray paints were decades ago for painting pieces of furniture. From limited colors to poor applications to unsmooth surfaces. I get it… There’s some apprehension here. But innovation in the paint department has improved like many other things. So you no longer have to fear spray painting your flip.
With a big comfortable button to press on top and a generous application with each pass, the drawer fronts, carcass and partially sanded top were fully covered before I even finished listening to a short podcast. In this case, a wooden dresser was finished in short order, but I could have also painted anything that happened to get in the way of my spray-painting groove from our metal patio furniture to the glass hardware I was replacing on this dresser.
As I mentioned above, the main portion of the dresser is going to be painted with Krylon Fusion All-In One Matte White. But don’t worry, I’m not that boring! Well… my daughter won’t want her dresser to be. On the drawer sides I’ll be adding a hidden pop of color with Krylon Fusion COLORmaxx Gloss Gum Drop Purple. Pretty masculine for this manly channel right? Don’t worry… it gets worse. Err… Better.
Since the veneer on the top had already been damaged from a previous owner, I had to scrap the idea of staining the top with Mixwax Golden Oak Oil based stain. I would have had to strip the entire veneer surface off, or meticulously patch it. For the sake of time, I ended up just painting over it like the last person. What I decided to do instead is sand the drawer fronts down to their wood finish and then stain those instead. And they turned out beautiful. But… I’m going to paint over those.
Wait, don’t worry, I haven’t gone crazy. I was going to be using my wife’s Cricut and add stencils to paint over and then peal them off to reveal the beautiful stained wood underneath. But… I don’t know how to use it… so I hand drew an entire massive design on vinyl and cut it out and applied it by hand. Ha!
The plan is to go with an outdoor motif with a campsite and the night sky. Then update the hardware to something that matched a little better. The question is… did we pull it off? The look, not the vinyl stencils.
I also love how the drawer fronts looked after I added the Minwax Stain. The poplar that was used really had some great colors coming through after the cleanup, so I wanted to figure out a way to paint and have that wood grain show through.
The Ultimate Test
What’s going to be a bigger test here? Gaining the stamp of approval from oldest daughter on the new look dresser or moving this piece of furniture back into the house without damaging the paint job? The answer is obviously the approval from my daughter. With Krylon Fusion All-In One with 5x Stronger Adhesion (compared to Krylon General Purpose paints), there’s no worry about scraping this paint off from normal wear and tear.
In terms of a quick DIY project, we checked all the boxes. A new look that will last. A satisfied customer. And a project that could be done over the weekend! That’s a win!
~Lazy Guy
*This post has been sponsored by Krylon
