Painted Waterfall Dresser - How To Cover Water Damage On A Dime

I found this beautiful, wooden waterfall dresser... OK, it was pretty ugly actually, but I needed a dresser and it had potential. This one was going for pretty much nothing on Craigslist, so I picked it up and started playing dress-up with it. :)

You can see from the pictures that the veneer on the top of the dresser was peeling off. It was the same story on the dresser sides at the bottom where there was water damage. But the refurbishing ideas were brewing....

I'd heard that you could peel off the veneer on waterfall dressers and still have a decent top. So I did it - and immediately regretted it. As you can see from the picture below, under the veneer was warped, cracked, and sorry looking to say the least.

The next idea was to cover it with contact paper. But to do that I would need a smoother surface. So I tried to glue it down, then attempted a sanding and paint job...

...but to no avail. Leaving me with a severely misshapen surface, this dresser was determined to look ugly.

Calling on my clever sister Summer, she suggested I try covering the damage with duct tape and THEN with the contact paper.

I gave it a go.

I was delighted with how well it worked! Seeing that the duct tape was sticking firmly to the painted wood (no peeling up) and it smoothed out the surface, I covered the whole top with a duct-tape veneer.

Yes! Now it was time to test out the contact paper and see how well it stuck to the duct tape.

Beautiful! The contact paper had a bit of a hard time adhering to the back of the dresser (which was NOT painted). Another strip of duct tape just along the edge did the trick (of course, where no one will see).

Time to address the water damage on the bottom of the dresser (thankfully just on the sides). I covered them with contact paper, but seeing that the warped wood showed through the contact paper, I turned again to my sister's brilliant idea...

...and covered every cracked and peeling piece of wood with duct tape!

I even covered the underside of the dresser because it looked pretty sorry too. I was afraid the contact paper wouldn't stay tucked under if it didn't have a good surface to work with.

I didn't bother painting the underside. I simply cut off the pieces that were destined to fall off anyway, cleaned the surface of any dust and splinters, and put the tape right on there. And it worked!

I finished applying the contact paper, using my trusty library card.

The edges got a perfect trim with my never-leave-home-without-it pocket knife.

Once I finished covering the dresser sides with contact paper, I tucked the contact paper up and underneath the dresser sides. And just like I did with the top of the dresser, I tacked on a couple strips of duct tape over the edge of the contact paper to make sure it wasn't going anywhere.

With all the water damage and peeling veneer now taken care of, it was time to make it pretty!

After taking off the hardware and painting each drawer front white, I taped off a thin square on each drawer and gave it a sharp black edging.

It looked a little unfinished, so I grabbed a rubber stamp, dabbed it in black paint and PRACTICED ON A PIECE OF PAPER! Always practice first. It keeps you from making really dumb mistakes and having to repaint your stuff.

The first stamp always blobbed, but the second one looked good and the third looked even better - perhaps a bit distressed. The slight imperfections of the second 2 stamps were perfect!

So I stamped a beautifully *imperfect* row of flourishes across the bottom of my dresser. Press rubber stamp in the paint, stamp on paper (to remove blobs), stamp on dresser once or twice, and repeat!

And that did it! It was finished. I put the handles back on (which already had a great worn finish, almost an industrial look to them) and put it in my room.

See? Much better!

And just so you know, I made this project about a year ago and everything is holding up really well!

Just remember to follow the contact paper instructions... I should have overlapped the contact paper on the top more than just a quarter inch. Half an inch to an inch would have been best since I had plenty of contact paper to work with, and you can't even see the seam in the design across the top.

But everything else - duct tape, contact paper, paint and all - is working out just swimmingly (and with a couple of young kids that love to use everything as a hammer on my dresser, that is saying something)!

I hope this helps someone out there refurbish their water-damaged, warped, or peeling furniture piece that needs a little love. I'm tickled with the way my painted waterfall dresser turned out. :)

Happy DIYing everyone!

Painted Dresser Revamp!

Here's another simple dresser refinishing project.

My husband's bachelor dresser needed a makeover in a serious way. It was brown. It was ugly. It was water damaged.

You see? Ugly.

Time to refurbish that dresser! Elephant Gray was the paint color choice, with accents of Brilliant White. With a little PINspiration (which my husband really liked), I chose to add a white pinstripe around the drawers and top. 

This was seriously SO easy! Paint it your solid color (gray). Once it dries, tape off some squares and paint them white.

And there's the finished beauty. I love it. I love, love, love it.

Next up: MY Dresser :)

Happy DIYing!  

~Jannie

Gardening tools - Fix Up!

Ok,  my organizational skills need help.  

Well... my "putting it back" skills need help!

So these little beauties were left out in the elements too long.  I still liked how they worked, but did not like the splinters in my palm. (insert frowny face here).  What to do?   FIX IT!

garden tools - fix me

 

...get a little paint.

...dip the wooden end in the paint.

...let it do a little bit of drying.

















Tada.... these tools are ready for some real work.

Now, if I can just figure out how to get it to rain every other day or so, I would not have to invest in a sprinkler system.


(I know, all ya all are laughing because Arizona is the land of perpetual sunshine and rain is once every 90 days or so.  That equals withered, parched plants.  But gardening tools are so cute... I keep trying to grow a garden anyway!)

-Tara

More fun with mirrors.

I think I'm addicted to mirrors and their possibilities. I love finding old things and turning them into something else.

This mirror is solid. And brown just wasn't working for me. But, we always see potential around here. Especially in thrift stores.

Normally, I would just remove the mirror like I did with the turquoise mirror a few months ago. But this one was a beast to remove. So, I just covered it with newspaper and taped it off, making sure a bit of the tape went between the gap (which was very, very small) between the mirror and the frame so no paint would leak through onto the mirror. Because that just means the paint that leaks will get reflected, too! So, I very carefully made sure that tape was under that gap to prevent this. I also primed it with spray primer, but that wasn't getting into the ornate carvings. So, I brushed it with the black paint so I could mash the paint into the grooves. My brush didn't thank me for it, but it got the paint to cover it. It took two coats, even over the primer. Lots of nooks and crannies.

We mounted it with two heavy duty wall anchors that will hold 200 lbs. Yeah, a little much, but I just wanted to make sure it wasn't going to pull off the wall. The mirror only weights 27 lbs. But, better safe than sorry. Screws are cheap security.

Here's my entry way now.