Black and brass

Welcome to a new week my friends! Hope you had a lovely weekend!

Yesterday I finished up the last DIY project for the family room – I think I keep saying everything is the “last” project and then I realize I have another one. For for real – this is it. We’ve been able to rework most of what was in the room before in the new set up and I’m pretty excited about that. I’ve only made one purchase for the “new” space – a gorgeous chair I found a HomeGoods a few weeks back. I’m in lurrrve with it.

In our old set up we used a dresser as the entertainment center:

I use dressers all over our house for storage – they’re pretty and functional. Most of them are Craigslist finds – well, pretty much all of them actually. The one above is one of my favorites but it was too long for the new spot in the family room set up.

So I switched that out for one that’s been in our bedroom for years. I’ve always had a plan to paint it but I bought it because I LOVED the lines:

Most of my dressers I would never paint – even with some damage I love the warm feel of the wood. This one though, I’ve never loved. The finish was a “fake” look – it’s an odd look that I didn’t care for. It had almost a spattered finish on the wood, I’m not sure how else to describe it. Let’s just say it wasn’t a pretty wood finish. And I’ve always really disliked the hardware on it as well – it’s felt too frilly for me.

So I didn’t feel bad painting this one. I considered just sanding it down to a more natural state – I’m loving that trend lately. But the new chair that sits in front of it already has a lighter look and I knew it wouldn’t be enough contrast.

AND sanding it down would require a ton of work – taking it outside and trying to get into all the little detailed areas of the piece. I prefer sitting on my butt and painting inside. ;)

I started by wiping it down well – I’ve used tsp cleaner in the past but over the past few years I’ve realized just regular cleaning wipes work just as well. You just want to get any residue or dust off of whatever you’re painting.

I primed it with my favorite primer:

I have this tinted gray because I use it on all of our interior black doors. It’s a super thin primer and SO easy to apply. It always goes on incredibly well and dries really fast.

Because I wanted to replace the hardware I filled the holes on the top drawers (they were a different type of hardware than the rest of the drawers):

After the coat of primer I made sure to give the flat surfaces a really quick sanding:

I kind of loathe sanding but this is just a light, fast sanding to knock it down just a bit. You’ll want to do that between each coat of color too – if you don’t (I skipped it once or twice this time) your surfaces won’t be super smooth. Not a big deal but it feels better with a smoother finish.

I knew I was going to like it when it was all primed and ready for paint:

I swear sometimes painting a piece really helps the pretty details and lines shine.

I found this AWESOME brush at Lowe’s that I used for most of the painting:

It’s a square brush and I’ve never seen one like it. It’s made for painting window panels but it was perfect for getting into all the grooves in the dresser. Loved it!

I’ve said many times over the years that I believe every room should have a touch of black. It’s grounding and gives some great contrast. I used to paint ever.y.thing. black but I’ve stopped that. ;) But I knew this one would look striking in a darker color so I went for it. I used the Graphite color by Sherwin Williams that I’ve used for our interior doors.

I found hardware that matched the wide (five inch) span of the old hardware but it was a brushed nickel and kind of basic. I didn’t love it. So I held up the old hardware against the new dark color and feel head over heels with it:

Well huh! I’m not kidding when I say I really didn’t care for these handles before – and now I absolutely positively LOVE them. I gave them a good cleaning with my brass cleaner and they are looking so much better than before. (Yes I had to knock out that filler I had put in the top drawers.)

You can see all the pretty lines of the dresser here:

I am obsessed with it now. Obsessed:

It’s so beautiful, I couldn’t be happier with how it turned out! 

On our doors that Graphite color looks more black but you can see it’s true color better here – a dark, dark gray:

I haven’t dressed it up yet – I just threw stuff on it for the pictures.

This dresser serves as my “office” storage. Or at least it will soon – I have some items in it but need to switch out my supplies from the dresser that used to sit in my office.

The best part – I spent $7 on a new brush and that’s all this redo cost me. WHOOT! I had the primer and paint so that’s always a bonus. I haven’t distressed it at all yet – I’ve said before that distressing stresses me. :) After all that work I hate to mess it up on purpose. So I’ll probably just let that happen on it’s own. And soon I’ll put a couple coats of satin poly on the top to protect it against scuff marks.

I am still laughing about that hardware too – I can’t believe how much I love it against the darker color. I think this may be my favorite painted piece ever and it’s the handles that put it over the top for me. Have you painted furniture? Do you have a go-to color?

I’ll be back on Wednesday with the whole space! I’m going to work hard over the next two days to get all the smaller details finished up.