Dresser Makeover

This is not a recent project; I've been meaning to share it with you for a long time. I began this project over two years ago, in fact. It all started when I saw this dresser put out for free on the side of the road:

My eyes were initially drawn to it by the bright blue color. On closer inspection, it was spray painted on cheap wood, and chipping badly. But I had recently seen a tutorial I wanted to try, I was in need of a dresser, and it seemed like the perfect opportunity.

[A note on the tutorial - I'm sure I bookmarked it, but I can't find it anywhere. When I googled it to see if I could find the one I used, so many tutorials came up. If I manage to find the one that inspired this project, I'll edit this post. Otherwise, just google 'furniture mod podge tutorial' (or something along those lines) and you'll see lots of different ways this has been used. And I mean lots.]

The first thing that I did was prime everything with Kilz, inside and out. Then the dresser got coats of white paint. I got that far, and then summer ended and teaching began, and everything sat in my garage for a year.

The next summer, I pulled everything out again and finished the coats of paint on the drawers. [Don't ask me why I waited that long - I could have easily finished this in one weekend. But you know how it goes...I guess we all have WIPs going, this was just an especially large one to store!]

To decorate the drawers, I set each one on the fabric I had chosen, and traced it.

Then I cut the fabric out. I put mod podge on the drawers, set the fabric on, and then mod podged (yes, it's a verb) over the top of the fabric.

Here's a close-up shot of the fabric I used:

Once the mod podge had dried, I used a drill to add drawer pulls (from Target):

And Ta-Dah!!!

A brand new, beautiful dresser for my closet. I've been using it for over a year now, and I still love, love, love it!!