Plain and boring dresser turned into a showpiece! — Bidziu

Nov 2

Nov 2 Plain and boring dresser turned into a showpiece!

For my daughter's "big girl" room, I knew I wanted to incorporate one element into the decor that would stand out and shine. When I stumbled upon this bone inlay style of furniture, I knew this type of dresser would be the perfect accent piece in my daughter's room. The problem, though, was that authentic pieces like this come with a hefty price tag and I was not willing to spend thousands on a dresser that my very opinionated little lady may soon deem inappropriate for her room.

Inspiration was drawn from this bone inlay dresser and night stand

I decided to take a cheap dresser and turn it into something very similar by hand-painting on the leaf bone design! I liked the IKEA Hemnes 3-drawer dresser because, with its straight and boxy lines, it was pretty much identical in shape and style to the inspiration dresser.

I happened to find one in great shape on Kijiji for half the price that I would have paid for a new one and I immediately got to work when I brought it home. I began by giving the entire surface of the dresser and drawer fronts a light sanding. From previous experience, I knew this was a necessary step because the finish on the Hemnes line of furniture is smooth and shiny, which is not ideal for application of paint and primer. Once sanded, I painted the dresser and drawer fronts with two coats of the best primer I could find at my local home improvement store. I selected a medium-dark navy as the base colour and gave all the surfaces 2 coats of good quality latex paint+primer in one paint. I prefer the paint+primer in one paint as opposed to just paint alone because, for the brand of paint I was using, it gave more even coverage.

Once my base coat was dry, and using a pencil, I roughly sketched out a leaf design that was similar to that on the authentic dresser. Using a good quality fine paint brush, I first painted, in a light cream colour, a thin line along all the edges of the dresser and drawer fronts. Next, I painted the crosses within the lines to create a border. Then, I painted on the "stem" of the leaf design on all the surfaces. I completed the leaf design by painting all the individual leaves onto the stems. Finally, I used an eraser on the end of a pencil to stamp dots on all narrow areas, like on the edge of the dresser top and between drawers. The finishing touch was to install cream knobs, which were actually metal that I spray painted in cream.