We have been having so much fun painting our furniture in bold and bright colors – I think we are ready for spring already! Did you get a chance to check out the last piece we did in pink?! HERE is the link if you missed it.

For this week we are again having a great time using our new paint line that we carry in our store and online – Fusion Mineral Paint. We chose a very fun color for this antique dresser. We feel like a fun color works really well on these antique dressers. And a beautiful aqua color called “Brook” was the winner! But first we had to get it all ready for paint…

As with many old pieces we have redone this one had some of the most common “problems”. It had some shallow scratches on the top, some veneer that was missing and peeling, as well as one drawer that was a bit tight. They aren’t the worst problems to have at all but happen all the time with old furniture.

We first addressed the top and the tight drawer since those needed to be sanded. We took our orbital sander and started to sand the top veneer with 120 grit sand paper. With veneer you have to be very careful not to go through it when sanding. Lucky for me the original finish was very thin and came off very easily without too much sanding! So I decided to keep the top natural wood since it sanded down so nicely. We really like to be able to save some of the wood if it comes out nicely!

Next came sanding down the drawer. For tight drawers that don’t slide well it is imperative to try to find out where the drawer is rubbing. Sometimes the joints need to be glued back in, sometimes the wood has just expanded, sometimes it is the bottom slides. Wherever your tightness stems from a good sanding usually takes care of it if the problem isn’t a broken part. Usually we will do a bit of sanding then put the drawer back in to see how much more we have to go. After sanding, add THIS furniture wax to the bottom slides and your drawer will be good as new!

As for the peeling veneer problem… if it is possible to glue it back down, that is usually easiest. However that wasn’t an option for this dresser since so much of it was already missing. So we tried a new method of removing it – and it worked AMAZING! We plan on doing a full tutorial the next time we have some veneer to remove, but it was probably the easiest we have done! All that we did was soak a light towel in water and place it over the veneer we wanted to remove. We then let is soak on the veneer overnight. And wow! It worked like a charm! It peeled up so easily the next morning. Then you can easily sand down the wood underneath.

Once those common problems were addressed we were able to clean it up with soap and water and lightly scuff the rest of the piece before painting with Fusion Mineral Paint.

There are so many things we love about this paint – but the built in topcoat and coverage are some of our top qualities we love! Most of the paint colors you could probably do a single coat if you wanted, but we decided to have extra durability of two coats for this piece. So two coats were painted on in the color “Brook” and we were almost done!

We did decide to line the drawers of this piece for some added character as well as add some beautiful ceramic knobs and drop pulls to bring it all together.

Products We Used:

Fusion Mineral Paint “Brook” / TSP Alternative Cleaner / Stain / Orbital Sander / Sand Paper / Furniture Wax (for drawer slides) / Top Ceramic Knobs /