I had these two pieces of furniture in my bedroom, both inherited from my dad. I believe they both part of his bedroom furniture when he was little, so technically they're probably inherited from my grandparents.
They were both in fine shape, but had clearly been knocked around over the last 60 years or so, and I had been considering replacing them with something new, but really hadn't thought too much about it. One night I was just sitting around, and suddenly it became clear to me that a few coats of black paint would make them the sleek and sophisticated pieces I was looking for. After a quick trip to the hardware store, I had set up a makeshift painting station in my bedroom and started work that night.
It took me a few weeks to paint each frame and all the drawers - priming, then at least 3 coats of paint, then 2 coats of poly to make it shine - and I could only really do one coat each night between getting home from work, cooking dinner, and waiting for them to dry. But finally they were finished, and then I had to figure out the hardware. Turns out that each one had these incredibly unusual measurements for the current hardware on it, so replacing it was insane.
I tackled the nightstand first. The drawer holes on the nightstand were 4 3/4" apart, and I just couldn't find anything I liked because there isn't a huge selection of this size out there in the world. So instead I took the old knobs from the top of the dresser (the little round guys), spray painted them to match my brushed nickel curtain rods, and put two of those in instead. So the finished product looks like this!
As you can tell from the second picture, I was still figuring out the whole painting thing when I did this one, since it was my first experiment. You can kind of see a few drips up in the upper left corner. Oh well - all in all, it was a great little project to dip my toe in the water.
The dresser has been a little harder to finish up. On the top drawer, there were these knobs, then on the bottom half, all these 1" tiny little pulls. I learned after many hours scouring the internet and visiting a number of antique stores that this measurement just really doesn't exist anymore. FML. Finally, I found these awesome Mission (kind of an Art Deco look) knobs for the lower half of the dresser, where the holes were 1" apart.
Genius! I hadn't even thought of giant knobs before, since I was only looking for pulls, but this solved the problem. At least for the bottom half. I've been dragging my feet on finding knobs for the top half since I just can't find anything I love quite as much as these giant knobs. But it's not an option to just get more for the top (since I took the last ones at the antique store), so I'll have to pick something sometime. I've got my eye on some I found online, and will probably pull the trigger on them eventually.
For now I'm taking a little break from the bedroom. Painting the furniture and doing some purging, de-cluttering, and lighting adjustments has really made a huge difference. In the second picture with the dresser, you can sort of see the tall lamp that I moved to my bedroom from the living room. I had always been annoyed that my bedroom was so dark that I couldn't see my clothes when getting dressed in the morning, and now that problem has been delightfully solved.
I still have a lot of work to do on using the space in my closet better.
It's not like a total horrible mess or anything, but the arrangement of the hampers (one for regular clothes, one for workout clothes - is that weird?) kind of annoys me, and I'm sure there's more purging I could do. But for now, I'm feeling pretty good about everything in there - I love the colors, and it feels like a really relaxing and elegant space to me.
Next time: Pressssssssssssssssssshious (aka My Stove)!
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