Gray, Gray, Take Me Away

Well, good afternoon!  Hope you are all feeling good and not missing that hour of sleep too terribly bad!  We actually slept in a bit this morning and skipped missed Sunday School.  Church was good though then it was lunch with some friends at Ruby Tuesday.  As for today, well, Justin is at work and I'm being lazy.  I've done some laundry and put a few things on Craigslist to sell and that's about the extent of it.  I better get on the ball because there are still a lot of things on my "to-do" list for today and today is quickly slipping away.

I'm sharing with you a dresser that I picked up at an estate sale on Friday.  I generally don't go to estate sales, but garage sale season is not in full swing yet, so I did hit a couple of estate sales this weekend.  So, as usual with estate sales, I paid more than I normally do for some furniture.  But, I'm so thankful that this piece was CLEAN...yep, you read that right...it was clean when I bought it.  I know that may not sound too exciting to you, but because I'm a proud cheap-o, generally the pieces I find are only clean about 1% of the time.  So, I guess my paying a bit extra paid off.  Here's the after:

 And here's the before (it wasn't too bad to start with, but was calling out for some paint to bring it to life):

 I started by sanding down the top to bare wood with my Dewalt orbital sander using an 80 grit, followed by a 120 grit. 

 I also sanded down the entire piece with a 120 grit to rough it up so the paint would adhere well.

 I wiped the entire piece with damp rag while my assistant was, well, um...not assisting.  Instead he was sunbathing.

 Oh, and I should probably mention that we are those neighbors.  You know, the one's you drive by and wished they would clean up their driveway or quit having so much stuff spread out at once.  The one's that are simply put...redneck.  And quite frankly, we're a bit proud of it...it's who we are in our core.  We were raised this way!  So, I'm working on about 3 projects at once and Justin was working on a project, our dog was out, and...

 ...of course, there were guns out.  I mean what's a redneck family out in the yard, without a gun.  My husband, a gun enthusiast, got this old gun that was covered in cozmeline (???don't have a clue how to spell that???)  Anyways, the sun heats it up and helps to melt it off, making it easier to clean.  Who knew you would get gun advice on a home decor/furniture blog??

 Moving back to the dresser...I painted the entire base/drawers in my grey mix from Benjamin Moore.  I gave it two coats.

 I stained the top with a dark walnut.

Here it is with a stained top and two coats of gray paint.

 And, here it is all put back together.

 Just beautiful, if I do say so myself!

 Gave the entire piece slight distressing.

 It already had great knobs (another rarity in my junkin' world)

 The entire piece was sealed with Minwax Paste Wax (natural) for protection and durability.

 All done:

This piece is for sale for $225 SOLD.

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