I Transformed This Boring Dresser With a Dramatic Makeover

Welcome to another video everybody. Today I'm going to be transforming this vintage crawler, very nice dresser, into something a little bit different. We're going to be doing a whitewash on the wood and cold black on the drawers. Let's get into it. My name is Angie and I'm the one behind Transcend Furniture Gallery, a business created from the love of vintage furniture and the desire to take broken, dated, and unloved things and turn them into modern treasures. Sometimes I paint, sometimes I don't, but I always do what I can to save old pieces from the trash. Welcome to my workroom. Okay and we're starting off here by pulling the drawers out. I'm checking that the runners are all good as I'm taking them out. Everything looks great so I'm going to go ahead and remove the hardware off all nine drawers. I'm just going to tuck the screws in a little container so I don't lose them. And on to the next one. I'm going to be doing a whitewash effect on this piece so I need to strip it down to the bare wood. I'm using circa 1850 stripper here. I'm just going to pour it on. There's multiple ways you can spread this around. I choose to use just a cheap old chip brush. Usually I can get a few uses out of them before I have to toss them. One of the most common questions I get asked is what kind of stripper I use and how it seems to work so well. The key is honestly putting enough stripper on that it stays wet. If your stripper dries out you're going to have to re-coat it and you're going to be left with a hard sticky gross mess. So put it on liberally and you'll have much better luck. Going to town here with my metal scraper trying to get this finish off. It's working okay but it's a little bit more difficult than it normally is. This finish is extremely thick so I'm going to be switching it up here and bringing out the big guns so to speak. This is a paint scraper. It's not the easiest tool to use. You don't want to just try this randomly someday on a nice piece. You want to make sure you practice with it first because you can really mess up your wood. All I'm doing here is removing the finish. It's not gouging the wood at all but again like I said I've had a fair bit of practice with this and I'm just going very gentle around the edges here because I don't want to chew up any of the wood. I'm just using a brush here to scrape off some of the more detailed areas as well as a scour pad. This stuff is a bit abrasive but it's nothing crazy. It's not going to scratch the wood. You might notice as I'm doing this that some of the wood grain is stained quite dark still. It's where the old stain has absorbed into those wood pores and I can't really get that off. You can see it there on the trim board. Because I'm going for a white wash and a little bit of a rustic feel, something a little bit different, I'm not too worried about it. If anything it's actually going to accentuate the drawers once I get those painted. I'm using just a little piece of 100 grit sandpaper to sand down the legs here. Here I am with Old Faithful, my DeWalt sander. I'm just using, I believe this is 120 grit. I'm just trying to knock off any residual stripper gunk and any finish that remains on the surface. Then I'll be switching over to a higher grit and going for some flat black spray paint for the original hardware. It's going to give a nice tone on tone look for the drawers and I'm super excited to see what this looks like in the end. Doing the final sanding coat on a piece of furniture that's been refinished has to be one of the most satisfying things ever. It's so smooth and so pretty. I was able to get out all but a few of the big gouges that were in this top here. I don't really want to go down any further into the wood so they're just character bits now. Getting ready now to paint these drawer fronts. I'm going to give them a good cleaning inside and out with TSP which is going to help clean off old furniture polishes or wax, fingerprints, dirt, all that good stuff and giving them a light scuff. I don't need to go down very far I'm just making sure that there's no imperfections on the surface and see here I'm concentrating a little bit on one spot. There's a little bit of wax there I believe from like a candle drip so I'm just making sure that's all gone and same thing here just giving it a nice light scuff so that the paint has something to adhere to. I'm using a slightly dampened shop towel just to remove any excess sanding dust before I get on to the next bit here. Coal black has to be one of my favorite colors to use. It's so pretty. If you're using it for the first time though be warned it is slightly translucent the first coat. You're going to get a lot better coverage on the second coat which you will see here in a couple of minutes. Here's a little progress shot. I know it's only about six minutes and 50 seconds into the video but in reality this is about a half a day's work. Here's a good shot of what I was talking about with the coal black being a little bit translucent. This is one coat so you can see a bit of the wood coming through but just wait till we start our second coat it's going to cover so much better. Whitewashing is one of those things where there's about 15 million ways to do it, not literally, but this is how I'm choosing to do it. I'm using approximately a half and half mixture of water and casement which is a super pretty white by Fusion Mineral Paint. I've seen people brush it on, I've seen people roll it on, I'm just using a sort of sopping wet shop towel to apply it and then I'm using a dry shop towel to remove it. You'll see a better view of that process here where I'm wiping it on, not letting it get too far so that it doesn't dry on me and then wiping it off before I move on to the next section. You have to move pretty quickly because the paint will dry fairly fast. I am already in love with how this is turning out. I love that it's got that nice pale color but you can still see the wood grain underneath and even the tone of the wood. Sometimes if you're doing whitewash over reddish woods like mahogany, red oak, stuff like that, there's a bit of a pink tinge to the wood and you can add a slight bit of green to your whitewash and that will help neutralize that a bit. Here I'm doing my second coat of coal black. You can see immediately how much better the coverage is on the second coat. Oh my gosh, this is so pretty you guys. I'm so happy. I just did a quick little sand with a fine grit just to knock down any of the wood grain that raised during the whitewash which is something that happens because you're literally putting water on wood. So just knocking that back. Not enough to take the color off but just enough to make it smooth in preparation for the top coat here, polycrylic. If you've never tried any of the Wise Owl furniture shelves, you definitely want to look into it. This stuff smells amazing. Normally I use the lemon verbena scent. This one is teakwood and amber I believe. You can use it over paint instead of a wax as a nice top coat. It has a lovely scent to it but you can also use it inside the drawer which is normally where I use it. It's great for nourishing the wood, giving it a nice light scent. It's nothing over dramatic. It's not going to knock you out when you open the drawer but it's just one of those nice little finishing touches. If you're enjoying these videos so far, please consider subscribing or giving me a thumbs up and leave a comment below. I'm a new channel so this will really help me out as I kind of get going. I am in the home stretch now. This is so exciting. I'm just adding the hardware back on the drawers. I knew I was going to love the black hardware on the black drawers. It's just stunning and it's such a great contrast with the sort of semi-rustic whitewash look. And this piece is done. Here is the reveal you've been waiting for.