Painting a Striped Dresser

This project was done for our most recent Dwell with Dignity install here in Atlanta and was all coordinated by Nandina Home & Design.

Today I am just sharing this one piece from the project but if you would like more info on Dwell with Dignity or want to see more projects from previous installations, you can search the blog for “Dwell with Dignity” and they’ll all pop up. If you’ve followed along for a few months though, you probably know I talk about it all the time. Such an amazing charity and such an honor to be a part of.  I’ll be doing a full break down on the latest install in a couple weeks.

But, for right now…  the dresser that almost killed me. It didn’t almost kill me because it was hard, it wasn’t even that it was tedious… I am allergic to whatever kind of wood it is. Like, seriously allergic.

Anyway, so this is how it started out:

Chanel, the designer in charge of this project, wanted a striped dresser with varying sized stripes in four different colors with plenty of the original off-white showing and the original stained wood top left alone. She also requested that the back interior of the hutch be painted a few different colors to match the bottom of the hutch.

I started by using a pencil to trace the opening on each section to give me a painting guide. The backs on these things are typically just nailed in place so I used a flat head to pop off a couple of the staples and then used a mallet to lightly tap the backing from the front until it popped right off. The next step was super simple – just paint the sections I had marked in pencil.

Simple.

Next up, the bottom part. There were some places that needed to be sanded and filled on the dresser, so I already knew it needed a full coat of paint. BUT, if I painted the bottom part, I would have to paint the top to match and that sounded like a lot more work. No thanks. So while I was using my mallet to pop off the backing to the top piece, I also popped off a side of the top molding, ran it up to HD and got them to color match it.

I sanded ‘er down, put her on my dolly and wheeled her into the paint booth for a spray down.

One coat got ‘er done but I since I was going to have to tape it off, I let her sit there for a full 24 hours under two fans to try to let the paint cure enough to use Frog Tape’s delicate surface tape.

After I got all of this done, I went inside, had a cold beer and did some laundry. And then I started to itch. It was insanely hot that day so I thought the little bumps that were popping up were a heat rash. I hit google for some info on heat rashes and decided to rinse off, sit on the couch and stay in the A/C until it cleared up.

The next day, I pulled the dresser inside so I could be in the cool air and get these stripes done. I did SO.MUCH.GOOGLING on how to go painting a striped dresser but didn’t find much that really helped me.

I also didn’t take many pics of this process but hopefully these deets will help ya.

I started by putting a piece of the FrogTape delicate on a small piece of the dresser and pressed down hard, let it sit for ten minutes and then peeled it off to test the first coat of paint. It was all good, so I got started. I used the edge of the dresser to help me keep the tape lines straight and did zero planning on the sizes of the stripes. I just went for it. Once I had taped off the left side of the dresser, I decided to go ahead and start painting. This way, I could see if my no-planning-plan was actually going to work. I got two coats of each color on each stripe and then peeled off the tape while the paint was still wet. The tape didn’t pull off the white but it also didn’t seal well enough to prevent bleeding so I took a risk and switched over to the regular FrogTape. I know that “sealing” the tape with the base coat is something that works well but since I only had 2.5 days to get this done, I didn’t have time for that.

To get the different sized stripes, I used my self healing fabric cutting mat. I just laid out some wax paper on the mat, then put one piece of tape on it and then used my yard stick to cut each piece of tape into perfect little strips of FrogTape. Then, when I was ready for a smaller stripe, I just peeled the wax paper off of the tape. The wax paper helps to keep the tape from losing it’s sticky and it worked so well.

Since this dresser has some little moldings to deal with, I just used a credit card to smooth the tape to the dresser as well as used it to push the tape into the little crevices of the molding to prevent bleeding. There was still a little bleeding, but not terrible, plus I had the white color as a back up for touch ups. You can also see in the above pic where I taped the inside top of the drawers (the yellow) , this way I didn’t have to worry about continuing the stripe on the inside lip of the drawer. I did the same for the interior sides of the drawers so the stripes are strictly on the drawer fronts. Less to worry about.

Rather than doing this in a pattern, I concentrated more on keeping it balanced. Chanel said she wanted more blue and coral and very little pink and green so I used the blue to give each side some balanced visual weight.

Howard was not impressed.

I started this thing on a Tuesday and had to deliver it on the day of the reveal, the following Friday. After showing this little dresser so much love, this is what that jerk did to me:

You can see the dresser in the back of my car in this pic – This was all over my body, from my ankles to my eyebrow fur. I finally went to see a doctor after I dropped the dresser off and he told me I was “at a 95, I need you at a 20.” Uhm, yeah, I need this ish at a zero, ehthankyou. Definitely not a heat rash but an allergic reaction to the dust from sanding the wood, complete with a fever. One shot in the rump and two meds later, I was on my way home. The main thing here, though is that this was for a great cause and some adorable kids have a fabulous and colorful room that they can be proud of. I’d deal with another rash if it meant I got to redo some furniture to make some kids happy.

Okay, ready for the after?!

Here it is in the kid’s room all styled up by the sweet peeps at Nandina.

And just in case you were wondering about the rest of the kids room, here it is before:

After:

Those bunk beds were custom made! Super cute, right!

Okay, one more look at the before and after of the hutch:

Just yesterday I found out about this contest called the Fab Furniture Flippin’ contest and this month’s theme is “Come On, Let Your Colors Burst” and if this rash-hole of a dresser doesn’t fit the bill, I don’t know what does.

All of the other entries for this month’s contest can be viewed on the featured hosts blogs –  Lynn at On Fern Avenue and Stacey at Anastasia Vintage .

The winner of the contest gets a prize pack from sponsor Unicorn Spit, which is a gel stain and glaze combo that can be used for all kinds of amazing and colorful designs. You can check out their website to see what kind of crazy magic you can work with that stuff.

If you are interested in joining in on the flippin’ fun, you can contact Stacy at info@anastasiavintage.com or Evey at info@eveyscreations.com.

If you’re curious about the colors used for the dresser, they are all Sherwin-Williams colors;

SW 6523 Denim (blue)
SW 6875 Gladiola (orange/coral)
SW 6716 dancing green (green)
SW 6585 coming up roses (pink)

OH! and one more thing, I added a page to the featuring a bunch of jerk holes with nasty comments, so, if you wanna look at that, it’s right here.