new to us

a few months ago ben & i had a serious discussion about our finances, spending, giving etc.  during this discussion ben told me that we should probably wait until he started teaching for us to purchase a dresser for our room.  ben will not be teaching for 2 or 3 years.  ben knows that i don't buy anything that is expensive.  he wanted me to wait 2 or 3 years for a craigslist dresser to grace our room.  months & years of clothes strewn about the floor flooded my mind.  luckily, i have a sweet prince of a husband and we didn't wait 2 years.

after perusing craigslist for a few hours minutes i found the perfect dresser for us.  we drove across town in 90-something degree heat in a van with no air conditioning and leather seats to pick up this gem.  all the sweat {literally} was worth it.

being the dum dum that i am i didn't take a "before" picture.  {i have a mild obsession with before & afters, i can't believe i forgot} furthermore, i didn't take a pic...not one...while it was out in our den.  now that it is in our room aka it's new home, our bed prevents me from taking any direct pictures either.  so double fail but here is the final product or at least what i could capture. 

we don't have a ton of light in our bedroom so it's hard to get a great shot.  i've yet to set up any type of vignette or such to snuggle this dresser into it's new place but that will come someday.  i hope to have a mirror to hang above it and minimal yet homey little lovelies to live on top.

the piece started as a medium-colored wood with some kind of different finish on the middle row of drawers.  i didn't mind it in its original condition but ben wanted to get to painting as soon as we brought it home.  so with gift-card in hand, hubby & i ran to home depot and picked up paint & other essentials.  we're getting to a point where we already have a lot of the tools & supplies that we need for projects, which is really fun.

we got a pint of martha stewart's 'glass of milk' in behr paint.  is that wrong to do?  we did it.  the color is barely off-white which is exactly what i was looking for.  not bright white but not a yellowish cream in the slightest.  it's perfect.

we did two coats of primer & two coats of paint.  let me tell you...this dresser was no simple sally.  it has about a billion nooks & crannies.  not wanting the paint to pool in all the little crevices we had to be very detailed & patient in redoing this piece.  we finished it off with two coats of poly-acrylic and sanded the edges lightly to highlight all the awesome intricacies.  it was definitely frightening to think about scratching up a perfectly fine, freshly painted piece of furniture but i think it was the right decision.  look at those pretty little legs!

after reassumbling the original hardware we drug this giant hunk of wood into our room.  it's more than 6 feet long i think.  so much space, functionality & warmth for $60.

...and it lived happily ever after.