Project!

Mom and I did some great work this week. We helped her get her living room arranged and put together and put up some photos and bought a lamp or two. It's been fun, and I'm glad we could have some fun time together to decorate away! 

My favourite project of the week, though, was her bedroom dresser. Mom needed a dresser, and we decided that the best way to put a small one in her room was to replace her nightstand with a short stack we found at IKEA. This one, to be exact:

This is the TARVA, $79 and solid pine from IKEA. We picked it up on Tuesday and hauled it home. I also bought some amazing velvet curtains for my living room, but that is another project that will not get done this Spring Break. 

So, we put all but the drawers together, then got to work on making it suitable for Mom's ever more chich bedroom.

Step 1: PAINT

We used Bayleaf from Valspar's Eddie Bauer paint line at Lowe's. I wish we would have left off the rails, but I already had to put them on twice, and I was afraid the holes wouldn't take a third try, so on they stayed—live and learn.

You can see in the bottom of the photo that we left the legs bare so that it would look like it was sitting on its own custom little platform. After the paint dried, we distressed the edges with sandpaper and then we went after it with stain. We used Rustoleum's Wheat color, fast drying. I would not use Fast Dry on a project like this again. It just dried a little too fast to get all the rubbing and wiping that I needed. It made stress, and projects like this should not make stress.

We stained the entire piece—bare wood, painted surfaces, and distressed edges. I just wiped on and wiped off, and in an hour it was dry. We waxed it with Paste Finishing Wax, my favourite way to finish furniture, and then put on knobs. We did 2 crystal knobs and 4 of the original wood ones and it looked like this:

(This photo is the most accurate representation of the color. Oh, natural light. :)

But, then Mom found some great knobs at Lowe's that really upped the "not homemade" factor on this beast, and now it looks like this:

Isn't it great? If we had it to do again, we would router the drawers and top before assembly to give more architectural detail and more surface to distress. Again, live and learn. It look likes a million bucks in their room, though, and the color has such depth; we love it!

This photo doesn't sshow the color, but it does show off the layout and Mom's new drapes that Dad and I hung for her this week. It looks like a cozy bedroom in there!