Our first DIY Project!

David and I decided that it was time to get Eli a dresser for his room. We have a cube of cubbies that has been holding his clothes and we had been using an Ikea table as a changing table. While that set up worked great when he was smaller, his clothes are only getting bigger, and I can definitely use the table elsewhere. So we decided to find an old dresser that we could re-do, and would be big enough to serve as a changing table. We searched on craigs list and free-cycle for a while and finally found a dresser, in decent enough shape, that we liked and was the right size for $15! Here is the BEFORE:

The flash makes the paint look brighter than it was, but it was an odd blue color.

So, I did some research for how to re-finish a dresser, and got started. All along the way we told ourselves that this was a learning experience, so it didn't have to be perfect. (But we are still super pleased with it!)

So we started sanding

Just as a side note: we did NOT sand the whole thing in our apartment. The complex has an apartment that the maintenance guys use as a shop, and we did most of the sanding and painting there. Whew!

Next of course, we painted it the new blue color we wanted. (I don't have a picture of this process, but it isn't hard to imagine...)

We knew that we wanted to put a basketball on the front of the dresser, but weren't sure how. After some time, I figured out how to use David's level as a protractor to make the desired size of circle, and then I free-handed the stripes for the basketball. The next question was how to get the pattern I had created onto the dresser in orange paint. David finally came up with the plan to stick painters masking tape to the front of the dresser, covering enough area for the basketball.

Then we carefully cut each segment of the pattern and traced the lines, so that we would end up painting only the orange sections of the basketball. After we traced the pattern onto the masking tape, we took sharp knives and cut away the masking tape where we wanted to paint.

Then we painted

{This is at least 5 coats of orange paint}

Once we were sure that it was orange enough, we peeled away the tape.

After that, it was time for new hardware. Initially we wanted to get drawer pulls that were all little basketballs. But we couldn't justify spending almost $100 for hardware on a $15 dresser. So we decided on the cheap method--wooden pulls that we paint ourselves. I actually think I like it better. I think the basketball pulls would have been distracting. So I painted the pulls, then I got to use David's drill (wish I had a picture of this) to make new holes for the pulls to screw into. And voila! AFTER:

{Yeah... I'm feeling pretty cool right about now}

We both had fun doing this project together. Last night David asked me what our next project would be. :) Guess I better come up with something.

And as for what I did with the Ikea table/previous changing table...you'll find out when I post pictures of our new apartment!