Antique Vanity Dresser Makeover for A Little Girl

I finished my daughter’s vanity dresser makeover for the $100 room challenge!

It’s hard to believe I am already writing my second post for the $100 room challenge.

This month is flying by! If you missed the first week of the $100 room challenge, you can check out my DIY wallpaper hack that I used to create an accent wall in my daughter’s room. I love how it turned out, and funny enough, that project actually influenced this dresser makeover.

Here’s the antique dresser that I started with:

This dresser has been in our family for years. It was my great grandmother’s dresser on my mom’s side. And, it was actually my dresser when I was a little girl. Except when I was little, this dresser was painted white.

At some point when I got older my dad stripped this dresser to what you see here. He decided to strip it because I had colored and put stickers all over it. That’s my pretty artwork below, inside the drawer, from when I was little.

This dresser sat it storage for awhile. A long while. Until approximately six months ago when I decided that we should use it in Hannah’s room. 

It’s a beautiful antique cabinet, and I’m so glad we moved it into her room. But, because I never actually finished it, we weren’t using it for storage, so it just sat there. This $100 room challenge pushed me to refinish this piece, and I’m thankful for that!

Earlier I mentioned that my DIY wallpaper influenced this project. That’s because I completely changed the direction of this piece from what I had originally intended. At first I thought I should paint it the same color as her twin bed, an off white sort of color. It would look like a matching set. But after I kept looking at the DIY wallpaper, I decided that I wanted to instead play off the rose gold color I used on the wall. That’s how much I love this color in her room.

I also realized that I really liked the wood tone of the dresser. I wanted to do some combination of natural wood and rose gold. That’s when I got the idea to do a two-toned look. I would paint the drawer fronts rose gold and leave the rest of the piece a natural wood color.

It worked out nicely because the wood on the drawer fronts are two different types of wood and the color tones are different. Painting the drawer fronts would ensure they would match, and I like my things to be a little bit match-y.

HERE ARE MY STEPS FOR THIS ANTIQUE VANITY DRESSER MAKEOVER:

1. LIGHTLY SAND DRESSER

   This dresser was already sanded down but I had gotten a few splats of paint on it from painting her room. I sanded the paint off splats off and lightly sanded the rest of the piece as well.

2. APPLY POLYURETHANE TO ENTIRE DRESSER EXCEPT DRAWERS

   I then removed the drawers and applied polyurethane to the rest of the dresser. Fortunately I had a relatively new can of polyurethane filled about 3/4 full from a stair project Jason worked on in our basement. I applied the poly with a paint brush and that was it. The main part of the dresser was complete! Note: I decided not to use any type of wood stain because I loved the natural wood tone as it was. You’ll notice the poly even darkened it up a bit, so I’m glad I didn’t use any stain.

3. PAINT DRAWER FRONTS ROSE GOLD

   This is the first time I have ever used craft paint from Michael’s on a piece of furniture. It worked fine, except that I had to use about 6 coats! I used the leftover paint from my DIY wallpaper project but unfortunately didn’t have enough to finish the drawer fronts. I made a trip back to Michael’s and picked up the last one of these paints. I used a little more than half of this bottle to finish the drawer fronts and knobs.

4. PAINT KNOBS ROSE GOLD

   I had planned to actually get new knobs for this project, but the ones I wanted were those clear knobs. I found them in Home Depot and in Target, but they were at least $4 for one. There was no way I was going to spend over $16 on knobs for her dresser so I painted the existing ones rose gold instead. If I ever come across some cheap ones in a clearance isle I may get them, but for now we are sticking with the old ones.

5. PAINT DRAWER INTERIORS WHITE

   I knew my leftover white paint from WalMart would come in handy! I had bought a gallon of paint to finish painting Hannah’s room before I did the DIY wallpaper accent wall. I used this leftover paint to paint the drawer interiors. 

6. APPLY POLYURETHANE TO DRAWER FRONTS

   Once the drawers dried, I applied poly to the drawer fronts only. I didn’t see a need to apply the poly to the drawer interiors.

7. CLEAN MIRROR

   The mirror is so old and I knew that a regular mirror cleaning solution was not going to help clean the mirror. I tried a few cleaning solutions including a degreaser, which actually helped get lots of black stuff off. I also tried rubbing alcohol (well actually I used nail polish remover because I didn’t have any rubbing alcohol), and it worked a little bit. I still have some old residue on the mirror that I’d like to get off. If you have any cleaning solutions for old mirrors, please let me know in the comments!

A last minute change I made was to paint the wooden shield on the top of the mirror rose gold. I think it helped tie the whole piece together. I’m really happy with how this antique vanity dresser makeover turned out. This is quite a different project than I am used to because I normally paint all my wood furniture white. This is the exception, and I’m pleasantly surprised with how much I love it.

It’s a pretty subtle difference in the before and after photo because I chose to keep with the antique wood charm. I’m loving the end result though and how much antique charm it still has. Here’s the before and after:

• Sandpaper (already owned)
• Polyurethane (already owned)
• Paint brush (already owned)
• Rose gold paint (used some left over from week 1, but I had to buy one more container) $1.25 (Original cost was $2.09 but I used a coupon and saved $.84. Also, oddly enough the price on this paint went up from the first week. Each container from week one was only $1.99!)
• Glidden white paint (used the left over paint from week 1)
• Paint roller: already owned
• Paint bin: already owned