Dresser Reveal (Finally!)

I wrote a month or so ago about some DIY projects that I wanted to complete before the girls were born (see To-Do Lists). I am happy to say that some of them have been completed, like the office organization and the chair/table recovering. Preston's baby book has made progress, but still isn't done. Hey, I still have a month, right?!?

Anyway, that very weekend my mom and I went yard-saling and found a dresser set that I wanted to re-do for the girls nursery. Preston's dresser used to be my dads and after some stripping (of the dresser...not me) and staining, Ed made it look brand new. So, I decided to save us a huge chunk of money and re-do dressers for the girls. How hard could it be, right?

Here are the before pictures:

This is the front of the tall dresser (chest of drawers? armoire? whatever.)

and this is the other shorter dresser. Again, don't ask me what they are called. I call them both dressers. Tall and short to be more specific. I didn't take a picture of this one fast enough before we started removing the hardware, but you get the idea. 

And this is the finished product:

My original plan did not include making them shabby looking, but after what felt like 700 coats of primer and paint we found that the drawers would no longer fit in the dresser.  Ed had to do a ton of sanding and re-working to make them fit and we discovered that we actually liked it better this way AND it goes with the vintage-y look of their nursery. 

In addition to the paint, I also painted the drawers pink, added glass knobs, and lined them with a fun floral wrapping paper. It was a lot more work than I anticipated, for a number of reasons. After we started sanding the finish off we found that red dye was leaking through and near impossible to cover up (hence the 700 coats of primer and paint), then because the dressers were so old the pulls were oddly spaced so we had to fill them in and drill new holes. Add to that the humidity, and oh, a hugely pregnant woman working on them and yeah...it took a couple of months. All in all, though, I am really happy with how they turned out. I honestly couldn't have done it without help from my mom and Ed, though, so a huge thank you to them! 

Now to fill them with lots of girly clothes :-)