Black Beauty

From the moment we moved into our home, our Master Bedroom has been one big hodge podge of unmatched, disjointed, and unharmonious...stuff. We had clothes hanging in the closet, and others folded into a dresser in another room, and then others in our guest room, or like I like to call it: Limbo. You know, where the clothes go to hang out {for a day, or two, or 100} after they've been washed and before they get put away. We had a TV on a short night stand that about three feet off the wall and a foot-and-a-half from our bed because the TV cord was too short (I'm still not sure why I didn't just go buy an extension cord). Our bed was raised making it incredibly hard to watch TV from anywhere on the bed except right at the edge closest to the TV. It was a hassle to find clothes, a hassle to watch Golden Girls hanging off the edge of the bed, and a hassle to keep Bubba from trying to rush the TV every time The Blind Side came on.

I figured the answer to all the madness was to get a tall dresser. I'm in love with Espresso furniture, so when I saw this on sale in an ad from the Navy Exchange, I marked my calendar so that I wouldn't miss the sale dates. It was on sale for around $120.00

While I was waiting for the sale date to come around, I had decided that I didn't want to spend $120 on a dresser. So I went to my pal, Craig.

For about two weeks, I watched and watched my notifications, and Craig wasn't kicking out anything I liked in the price range I wanted. I then went to Pinterest and found tons of great tips on painting furniture. 

Not long after, I came across a tall 6-drawer dresser in an oak/blonde wood color on Clist. It's important to check out the bones of the piece, and not so much the color or hardware. I hated both on this dresser, but figured I could change it to match what I was looking for in the $120 dresser for less money. 

Here's what I started with:

I went to google to find tutorials on how to paint laminate. I hate to sand stuff, so I was thrilled to find tutorials on various blogs for painting projects that didn't require sanding. I started with a good cleaning of the dresser, removed the wooded knobs and then two coats of this primer:

This is what my Lowe's had in stock, and it worked fine for me. It stuck very well to the laminate, and the paint stuck well to the primer. I will most likely use this for the rest of my paint projects.

When I was buying the paint and primer, I had to ask an employee about a paint recommendation. They had black Valspar paint on the shelf, so I bought a gallon of that because I'm in a "Black Phase" and I knew I'd be doing more of these transformations in black.

After letting the primer dry overnight, I gave it two coats of black paint. After letting it dry again (I'm so impatient), I put on the new nickel knobs I picked up at Lowe's, and this is what I ended up with:

For around $100, I got a dresser that was taller than the Sauder dresser, with MORE drawer space, and a perfect fit for our TV. After lowering our bed and moving our clothes into this dresser from the other room, I solved the main gripes I had about our room. :)

What have you all painted, or plan to paint? I had a blast with this one and plan on hunting Clist for more treasures to transform. Happy Painting!

~xoxo, V.