I woke up bright and early and removed hardware, sanded, washed, primed x2, painted x2, added a white bead-board backing, and reattached hardware to finish my campaign dresser and hutch.
I have to say that I'm very happy with the results (even working through my fear that I *gasp* may have chosen the wrong color.) Luckily, I waited until reassembling the piece with the hardware before making my final decision. As you've seen in my post earlier this week, we decided that the piece would work better in our reading room rather than the dining area, so that's where it's going to live. And I love it. The color I went with is Behr's Strawberry Daiquiri and, while bright and definitely pink, is gorgeous and works very well with my new velvet sofa.
Here's the play-by-play of the steps I took to bring her from brown drab to her updated present day glory:
...there she is. a diamond in the rough waiting to be loved (with ms. cleo)...
First thing's first, remove the hardware:
...yes, that's a butter knife wedged in between the bracket and the wood. I used it to gently (and more often times, roughly) separate the wood from the bracket just enough to get my next tool in there...
...a flat head screwdriver. I would put this close to where the nails were and wiggle it around to get the nail out far enough to use the next tool...
...needle noes pliers. I actually used the little area closest to the "neck" of the pliers to pull out the nails...
...blurry action shot! success!..
Rinse, wash and repeat until all of the brackets are removed. In this case, there were approximately a bajillion brackets and three bajillion nails to remove. I was very careful to keep all of the bits and pieces from this step in a container - together - so that they were easily found later on.
I next took the backing off of the hutch. This was old and had holes cut in it and wasn't actually wood, so it had to go. The only photo I got of this was this one of the staples I removed (fascinating, huh? oh wait, no.):
I next took out all of the drawers and removed the drawer pulls. Then I took dish washing soap and water and washed down the entire dresser, hutch and drawer combo. After it dried, I did a light sanding job, then patched any holes and let it dry. Another round of sanding later and I had pieces ready and waiting for primer:
First things first - tape off the edges of your drawers - it will look so much better:
After two rounds of primer:
After three rounds of paint:
It was around this step that I took a step back and said, "Well, crap. Maybe I did choose the wrong color." Before I let myself freak out too much, I took a drawer pull and put it in place to test before I just repainted the whole thing navy blue or some other much more neutral color:
...yay! It actually toned it down a lot and was just what I had hoped it would be!...
Next I got the bead board cut at the hardware store and attached to the back with a staple gun:
Then it was time to reattach all of the hardware and put the hutch back in place:
To recap, before:
Yay!
