Dresser Remodel for Nursery

So in our Nautical Nursery for our baby girl we wanted to keep costs low.  We splurged on a beautiful crib & even after splitting the costs with our mothers, it was more than we would have liked to have spent so we wanted to make up for it in the rest of the room.  In the last post, I talked about the changing table remodel from the old double dresser we found in a garage.  It wound up matching the crib perfectly, so I tried to get the same effect on a taller dresser that we were putting in the nursery. The dresser we put in there was a dresser that Steve's dad built for him & was in his room when he was little.  It was a light brown then.  When Addy was born, we painted it white to match Addy's nursery.  I had bought some adorable painted owl knobs for it.  However, once we inherited my grandmother's furniture when we updated the guest room, we realized that we had ALOT of furniture & the guest room is pretty small.  So as you saw in the post about our updates,  we put a double dresser, nightstand & bed in the room.  That left us with another nightstand & a tall dresser.  Since we moved Addy up to her big girl bed, we decided that she needed a big girl nightstand & that she might as well have the tall dresser to match.  So we were able to move her old white dresser over to Peyton's nursery.

 Here is the white dresser with the knobs removed.  Since we had changed our plans from the white furniture to the grey furniture, I had to come up with a plan to renovate this dresser.  Luckily, I did this project after I redid the double dresser for the changing table so I had a good idea of what to do.

 I painted the dresser grey & then got to work with the glazing, using the same Valspar glaze that I used on the changing table & on some of my other DIY projects.

 Here is a close-up pic of the glazing.

 Here is a close-up of the finished dresser before putting the knobs on.  Speaking of knobs, I couldn't figure out what to do for these.  I saw some really cute ideas different places, but everything seemed too expensive or too difficult to DIY (and you know I love a good DIY).  I just couldn't find anything that I loved.  One day at Hobby Lobby, I saw these knobs that looked like shells.  They were $3.99 & then half off that week, so that helped make my decision.

 I wasn't sure how the knobs would look, but I was pleasantly surprised.  They look shell-like & look pretty good up against the grey dresser.

Here is the finished dresser.  It sits right beside the crib, so thank goodness I was successful in geting the paint color & the glazing to match it.

 Here is the finished dresser once it had all of its "decorations" & "accessories".  I am going to do a post on those soon, so check back in later.  : )  Happy hump day everyone!

Changing Table/Dresser Remodel for Nautical Nursery

So above you can see some finished pictures of Peyton's Nautical Nursery.  Now that you have seen the finished project, you may be wondering what it looked like before.  Well I'm so glad you asked.  : )  This post is going to be about the changing table/dresser remodel & how it went from a dingy brown dresser we found abandoned in a garage, to the snazzy (if I do say so myself, haha) piece that you see above.

So here is what we found abandoned in the garage of a house we purchased.  My husband saw junk of course, but as you have seen in my Vanity Rehab & other DIY posts...I thought it was furniture gold.  It was a good solid piece that I just knew I could turn into something wonderful.

My first step was to remove all the hardware.  Since the top was laminate, I didn't want to sand it & ruin it, but I did sand the few little areas that had some spilled paint.

So if I wasn't going to sand it, how on earth was I going to get the paint to stick to it?  Oh just with the best stuff ever, the Kilz general purpose primer.  This is the best stuff, especially with pieces like this that have parts that are solid wood & then tops that are laminate.

So here is the dresser & the drawers painted with the Kilz general purpose primer.  It goes on grey, which worked out well since we were doing a lighter version of grey on this dresser.

Now for the color, originally we were going to go with white furniture in the nursery.  However, while out shopping for a crib, my husband decided he really liked this grey crib.  My husband usually has little opinions as far as how to decorate the rooms in our house, so since he had an opinion & the crib was really cute, we splurged & bought the grey crib.  It was almost $750, which is way more than we were anticipating spending.  Luckily, our moms decided to split it with us & each gave us $250.  That was awesome.  So here is the beautiful crib...

And here is the minor problem, it was a distressed grey that was nearly impossible to match to paint the other furniture.  We took two different trips to Lowe's & brought home those little paint chips with colors that we thought would match.  We even had a picture on our phone.  Not one of the samples was even close.  So we took a third trip where we picked up every single greyish paint chip.  We brought home at least 30.  Low & behold, we finally found one that was pretty close. 

So I painted my primed dresser the grey color.  This was about the time that my husband came out in the garage & said, "Uhh, isn't that way too light?"  Ye of little faith.  After the paint dried, I began the glazing process.

Now if you read my Vanity Rehab post, you know how much I LOVE this Valspar antiquing glaze pictured below.  It is fantastic.  I use the asphaltum shade.

So I took a ripped up t-shirt & started rubbing the glaze on & rubbing the excess back off until I was satisfied that it was dark enough.  Here are some up close shots of the drawers.

Now I worked on this project in the garage & the crib was already set up in the nursery upstairs.  I had no clue how much glazing I needed to do in order to get the shades of grey the same, so I just winged it.  And I must say, when my husband toted it upstairs, he was very impressed at how well they matched.  It was pure luck that they matched so well, but we were all pretty satisfied with the end result. : )

For the pulls, I saw these pulls online at Anthropologie & I thought they were perfect.  Here is a pic of them.

However, these pulls were $12 a piece.  So for 7 drawers...I don't think so.  So I chatted with the hubby & he said he could make some rope handles.  So we took a little sisal rope from Hobby Lobby (you probably saw me use this a good bit a the Ahoy! It's a Boy! nautical shower) & my husband made some handles.

Above is the rope.  Since my husband did this project, there are no step by step pictures, but he took the rope & first decided how long he wanted the handle to be.  He used the holes from the original pulls & he tied knots on the outsides of the drawers on each end & then tied knots on the inside of the holes as well.  To make the handles more secure, we took the upholstery stapler that I use for a lot of my DIY projects  & stapled the knots to the back of the drawers.  

Here is the finished project.  The lighting is not great, but you can see the distressed lines & the handles.

Here are some close-ups of the decorated dresser.  We really loved how it turned out & besides the purchase of paint, it was relatively free since we already had the rope & the glaze.  This was also a pretty fun project, since the hubby helped out.  And since the dresser matches Peyton's crib (which turns into a bed), the dresser/changing table can grow with Peyton & just be a dresser as she gets older.

Nautical Nursery

So I have been a little MIA, but it's all due to a good cause.  Our little girl Peyton was born a little over a week ago & we have been in baby heaven ever since.  Now that we have gotten in a good repetition, I have found a little time to start blogging again while baby girl sleeps on my chest.  I figured now would be a good time to start updating the blog on the different projects that were a part of creating baby Peyton's nursery.

As was the case when we did Addy's nursery, I didn't want to just go to one of the box baby stores & pick out bedding & a theme for Peyton's nursery.  This pregnancy seemed so different from when I was pregnant with Addy so up until our gender ultrasound, I was convinced I was having a boy.  I was thrilled about having another girl, but I had no nursery ideas.  I have always thought nautical decor was so cute, but it doesn't go at all with the overall theme/color scheme of my house. Since I feel like nurseries are separate entities from the rest of the house, I thought Peyton's nursery would be the perfect place to incorporate cute nautical decor.  And thus, a theme was born. : )  Here is a sneak peak at the finished nursery.

I lied, there is actually one more frame that I am hanging on this wall to the left of the mirror & just haven't gotten around to it yet. Sorry about that. : ) 

First off, there are so many awesomely adorable ideas for nautical decor so I wasn't even sure at first where to start.  I took some of the ideas from the "Ahoy! It's a Boy!" baby shower that I threw for one of my best friends before she had baby Alex & of course, a lot of ideas came from Pinterest.  I did as much DIY as possible to keep costs low, but since I am no seamstress, I did purchase the bedding.  I found a bedding set from the Beach Baby Couture shop on Etsy & picked out a pink crib sheet with whales, a pink & navy crib sheet with boats going across the ocean & a pink & boat themed minky blanket as well.  It was $130, but that was going to be our only big purchase for the room (besides the crib), so I didn't mind too much.  I saw some super cute bumpers all over Etsy & some other places online but they were so expensive & they just were not exactly what I was looking for.  I finally managed to find a crib bumper that was perfect online at Babies R Us & it was only $29.99.  It was probably so cheap because it was being discontinued because I can't find it online anymore to link to it, but here is a picture of the bumper & the bedding.

Crib bumper

Crib skirt

Blanket

I must not have taken a picture of the crib sheet, but it is the same pattern as this little tag blanket. 

The only other thing we bought for the nursery (besides a few knick knacks here & there) was the crib, but I will write more about that in the posts about the Nursery furniture...where you will also see a few DIY furniture transformations of a changing table and dresser too.  Check back in for those posts, as well as one on another DIY baby mobile, DIY no-sew curtains, curtain rods, shelf, accessories & more.  Hope everyone is wonderful!