Projects Big & Projects Small

I've mentioned that we've done several projects around the house, and this one goes pretty far back. We actually started this project when I was pregnant with Jude and moved Aubrey to her new room. It should have been a relatively "small" project, but it turned into a rather "big" project. I wanted a dresser for Aubrey's room, and I didn't care what it looked like, because I was going to paint it and distress it anyway. I found this dresser at Goodwill for $40 and it was perfect. We didn't use the mirror.

We had a lot of white paint left over from Aubrey's room that we used below her chair rail, and we decided to just use that since we already had it. It turned out to be a big mistake, because it was semi-gloss paint, which doesn't work great for distressing. We didn't really think about that at the time, though, so we painted the whole dresser with that paint. After the paint was dry, I went to work distressing it. I just used some sandpaper and did it by hand. I wasn't real happy with the way it was turning out, because sanding was rubbing the shiny finish off where I was distressing, so the dresser was turning out to be a mixture of dull and shiny -- not the look I was going for. I was also working on this little project outside in our garage in July while 9 months pregnant. Oh, and I was SUPER swollen. Not the best combo. So, the dresser kind of got put on the back burner, and when Jude was born a few weeks later, it was forgotten. It literally sat unfinished in our garage for months, and we couldn't even park our cars in there because of the dresser. Months later, we were ready to use our garage for it's intended purpose, and I finally went to work on the dresser again. I thought that the only thing we were going to be able to do to salvage the dresser was to completely sand the shiny paint off and start over with matte paint. So, David got out his electric sander and went to work on it to prepare it for another coat of paint. However, the more he sanded, the more it was growing on me. At that point, I was kind of just ready to be DONE with it, so, after David got all the shiny-ness sanded off, I decided to just go with it. It's now heavily distressed, and I was really planning to do more of a light distressing, but I really do like the way it turned out. I ended up putting a light coat of tea stain on the whole thing, and we replaced all of the hardware. Once we were done, I was happy with the finished product! I know it's not everyone's taste, but Aubrey's room is very "shabby chic," so it works! :) The interesting part was getting the dresser upstairs. David was convinced that it was going to take 4 or 5 grown men to get it up (it's heavy and awkward), but I was impatient to get it up to Aubrey's room. I convinced David to try to get it up the stairs with just me one morning, and we did it! I'm sure it was a hilarious sight to see, but I was pretty proud of myself once it was safely upstairs. Haha!

Aubrey's room is still a work in progress, but I'm happy to be one step closer to getting it done and turning it into a sweet "big girl room."I'm afraid the next project in her room is going to be getting her into a big girl bed!! Ahhh! I'm kind of dreading that ;)