Home: Lace Chest of Drawers

If you don't mind, I've got something a bit different to share with you today. When I moved house towards the end of last year, I needed to get a new chest of drawers. Rather than buy a basic Ikea one, I decided to look for something more sturdy and came across this in a local secondhand shop...

While it was definitely sturdy in essence (it's a heavy beast!), it had a few problems that needed fixing and the dark wood and gold coloured fancy handles weren't entirely to my taste. Thankfully, my Dad is fairly handy when it comes to do-it-yourself projects and was happy to help me with the more technical aspects of fixing it up. Between us, we've worked on it gradually over the last couple of months and here's what it looks like now....

Quite a transformation, don't you think?

In terms of repair work, I ripped off what was left of the old trim around the top and bottom, removed the drawer handles and sanded the whole thing down. My Dad than attached a new trim, replaced the back with a new panel, repaired the stoppers for the drawers and filled in the holes left from where I removed the handles.

Then came the fun part - deciding what colour to paint it! That actually proved to be one of the trickier parts of the process as far as I was concerned because I had too many ideas about what I wanted to do.

In the end, my mind was made up when I discovered a pretty lace wall/furniture stencil from Dizzy Duck Designs on Etsy. If you're interested in doing anything similar, I'd definitely recommend these stencils. Mine arrived really quickly, the film used is flexible but sturdy and, most importantly, the stencil was easy to use. I was concerned about getting the pattern to match up properly as I moved the stencil along the drawers, but there are clear overlap points so it's easy to produce the repeating pattern.

I'll be honest and say that my stencilling is definitely not perfect. There are quite a few points on the finer lines where it looks like my 'lace' has broken slightly, but I don't think that detracts from the overall effect at all. If anything, it just goes to prove that it's done by hand instead of mass produced.

I was fairly heavily influenced by one of the example photos that was shown on the listing for the stencil, although I went against my usual tendency to make everything blue and went slightly more green when I chose the paint. Although, if I'm being honest, I had fully intended to buy cornflower blue paint but when I got to the shop it was out of stock so I had a quick reconsideration. The paint I used is Rust-Oleum Satin Finish Furniture Paint in teal (which I personally wouldn't call teal, but the colour on the pot is an accurate reflection of the paint colour, so that's fine) and cotton.

If you're thinking of doing any furniture make-overs, one practical thing that I'd recommend is that if you're doing it in winter I'd make sure that you have somewhere heated where you can work! I was originally working on this in my parents' garage, where at one point it took glue over a week to set because the temperatures were so low. When it came to doing the painting, the paint needed to be used at above 10°C. Thankfully my parents are very accommodating and didn't mind me taking over their dining room with my chest of drawers, paint and a ground sheet!

I'm so pleased with how my chest of drawers turned out, and it's lovely to have a piece of furniture that's completely unique. So much so that I now want to repaint all the things! I have a couple of smaller projects in the works already, so they may be popping up around here soon - but don't worry, normal sewing/knitting/occasional crochet service will still be happening too!