The Turquoise Dresser

So let's talk about that turquoise dresser sitting in the corner. It's really nothing special. It's old, very simple, and the drawers don't quite operate properly. But once upon a time, it called a farmhouse in Storden, MN home- the house that my mother grew up in. It eventually made it's way to our house in Jackson and later to Mountain Lake. Somehow, it ended up in my hands. At first, I tucked it away in my closet as extra storage. It sat in my closet, full of papers and stray ankle and knee braces, notebooks, and all sorts of other weird stuff. Then, the dresser made it to my first apartment in Mankato. It safely held my clothes for a year, and then made it's first move out of state, when Keagan and I moved into a farmhouse in Paullina, IA. It's first military relocation brought it to Stafford, VA, where it brightened up yet another room of white walls. Then, to Pensacola, FL it went. It sat for awhile, looking kind of awkward.

We had talked about the dresser for awhile- getting it fixed up and repainted, but the nostalgic part of me wouldn't quite let go. Honestly, I liked the odd turquoise color (despite it's many chips and scratches). It was unique. Looking at the dresser and remembering where it had been was a strange sort of comfort- it's really the only physical thing that's been everywhere I have been. I liked that it used to belong to my mother. I liked how in so many white-walled rooms, it added an interesting bit of color. Anyways, I'll move on from the boring backstory now. Point is. It's a dresser. It's kind of special to me, and we decided to paint it.

Early this week, thanks to another delay in Keagan's training and my classes, we decided to finally tackle a couple of projects we've been putting off. We made the guest bathroom an acceptable place and started to work on our bedroom. We picked out a comforter, curtains, and a couple of big mirrors that were on sale (yay!!). And then, we picked up some paint. You see, as much as the turquoise colored dresser was unique...it really needed help.

We made a game plan and got to work. First, we stripped the paint. It was messy, and took a couple of coats, but worked pretty well.

Then, after sanding out the imperfections as well as we could, we used a spray primer to get it ready for painting. (Later, we realized that priming the entire dresser was totally not necessary. The drawers were all that really needed it).

Then, we got to the fun part. I went to work painting the outside of the dresser, while Keagan sat to do the math for the drawers. It was all fun and games, until we realized that our chocolate-brown was really not anything close to chocolate brown and prompted us to come up with some less-than-nice names for the paint color...

But life goes on, and we picked up a new, darker paint color that looked way more like perfectly-rich-and-delicious-chocolate and less like pond-scum-booger-slime-greenish-brown.

Keagan, the brains of this project, taped up the drawers and we painted the blocks. We found out that peeling the painting tape off while the paint is still wet is the way to go. Our lines were way more perfect than we expected them to be. After letting layer two of the paint dry, we added the new handles.

And then it was done! It was so fun to work on this project together. We were both itching to work on something, anything. Having a lot of free time is great, for awhile, but we are definitely at the point where we needed something to help us feel accomplished. We're loving the new look. And even though it's not a unique turquoise, I love that it's still the same dresser, still has the same history, and is now evidence of a project we worked on together.