Fabulous Mid Century Dresser Makeover By Somewhat Quirky Design

by Somewhat Quirky

This dresser has been storing one thing or another for various people in my family for over 60 years! The drawers are huge and so great for storage - it holds at least two times as much as the same size piece built today. When I found out the theme for September's Fab Furniture Flipping Contest was "geometric design" I knew that this was the piece I wanted to work on.

bring a 1950 s chest into the 21st century, painted furniture

Just the sheer rectangleness of the piece and the rectangles in the upper drawers are geometry in it's simplest form. The good people at General Finishes are sponsoring the contest this month and sent all of the participants one of the product of their choice.

I decided to go for it and let this be a complete General Finishes makeover. I ordered Milk Paint in Snow White and Coral Crush, Gel Stain in Gray and Black, and their High Performance Water Based Top Coat. I mixed the two colors of milk paint to get a third milk paint color.

I painted the small rectangles - Coral, pink, white and grey in each quarter of the top two drawers. Then I used the black gel stain in the small recessed areas between the panels on the drawers.

The black lines make it reminiscent of Mondrian. I used 3 coats of the two pinks, 2 coats of the grey gel stain, and 4 coats of the white.

The original hardware cleaned up nicely and I love the way the brass compliments the colors. The black areas are the black gel stain. I was thrilled with the coverage of the gel stain. I've always preferred gel stain, but I had never used the General Finishes version before. I'm a fan.

I stained the bottom handles with the gray gel stain. I would love to be able to afford some very long brass bar handles, but alas I cannot. They're a bit pricey!

I think it turned out beautifully. I was quite impressed with all of the General Finishes products. The entire piece is covered in 3 coats of General Finishes High Performance Water Based Top Coat.

Type in the here on Hometalk and see the other entries for September

See more pictures and my evaluation of the products in my blog post.

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3 of 4 comments

Carol Bevil on Dec 25, 2015
Wow....I can't believe how pretty that turned out. Great imagination!

1 Reply
- Somewhat Quirky on Dec 25, 2015
  @Carol Bevil Thank you Carol!
  
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Thea on Jan 04, 2020

Maaaan this is absolutely gorgeous!

1 Reply