Farmhouse Guest Room Dresser Transformation

I’m finally having the chance to share with you this guest room dresser transformation that we did, and I am so excited for you to see it! One thing some of you may not know about me is that I love DIY’s. (I’m pretty much the queen!) Even more so, I love re-finishing furniture. One of my favorite things I use to do in Texas was go to flea markets with my momma and find the perfect pieces to bring back to life.

Thankfully, I married a man with the same passion, and together we’ve been building and re-finishing gorgeous pieces for our families, friends, and our own home. If you happened to see the teaser I put on my Instagram story the other day, you may have an idea of what big things are in store for us this year. While I can’t say much more right now, we are beyond excited for this next thing God has called us to pursue.

READ ALSO: DIY Magnolia Wreath Tutorial

Project Insights

You may be surprised, but this beauty of a dresser is actually the one that I grew up with. It was actually a gift from my grandparents about almost 15 years ago. Not only is it a great quality piece that still looks brand new. But, they also stained and finished it themselves. When Rob and I got married we inherited a much larger dresser for our rental’s master bedroom, so this dresser became the guest room dresser.

When it came time to move into our new home and design out the spaces, I knew it was time to give this dresser another life to work with our style. It’s been a great dresser that’s been lived with and loved on the past 14 years, and I couldn’t bear the idea of getting a new one. If there’s anything that you take from this blog post: it just goes to show what a little creativity and love can do to transform a piece to have a completely different look that can work with your home’s style.

Materials:

• Sander
• Valspar Furniture Paint – White
• Mini Wax Wood Finish Stain – Provincial
• Annie Sloan Wax – Dark
• Farmhouse Drawer Pulls

Before

Here is what the dresser looked like before we started. Can you believe that it’s almost 15 years old? This is why you invest in high quality pieces (and take care of them!) To give this piece a new life in our modern farmhouse, we wanted to re-stain the top and paint the dresser itself white.

 

After Paint and Stain

The Stain:

Since it was already stained and sealed, we started off by sanding down the top to be able to give it a new stain. My favorite stain to use for projects is the Mini Wax Wood Finish Stain in the color Provincial. Keep in mind that a little will go a long way. One rule of thumb when it comes to stain is that you can always make it darker by adding additional coats, but you can’t go lighter. I find that Provincial is really the perfect brown stain that is gorgeous in a variety of different ‘shades’ (depending how many coats you do) and doesn’t cover up the characteristics of the wood itself too much. To get a rich dark brown color on top, I did probably about 3 or 4 light coats.

The Paint:

I’ve always been an Annie Sloan Chalk Paint kind of girl. I love how easy it is to paint furniture pieces with no sanding or prep work required. But, living out in the country, I don’t necessarily have quick access to pick it up when I need it. When Valspar came out with their new furniture paint, I heard such great things about it and knew I wanted to give it a try. Like chalk paint, it didn’t require any sanding or prep work, and it dried to a satin finish that didn’t need to be sealed.

However, I must say, I didn’t like it as much as my chalk paint. It took twice as many coats and I did have to fight brush marks throughout the process. It does require a higher quality paint brush than chalk paint, so that could have also been my problem. In the end, it didn’t really matter because I knew I wanted it to have a light distressed look.

Faux- Distressed Look with Annie Sloan Dark Wax

I’ll be the first to tell you that I absolutely love the shabby chic look. I’ve re-finished a lot of pieces by painting with chalk paint, distressing, and a wax finish. However, I really wanted to try something new with this piece and give it a more subtle distressed look. Rather than going back and distressing the piece again after the paint was finished, I went in with Annie Sloan Dark Wax and a small paint brush over edges and areas of the piece that I wanted to look worn and distressed. I applied the dark wax with one brush and blended it out with an additional small paint brush.  You can see below the subtle difference it added and how much character it added to the piece.

(Left: Faux Distressed ; Right: Just Paint)

Finishing Touches: Farmhouse Drawer Pulls

One great easy way to freshen up any space and give it a new look is to change out drawer pulls. Not to mention, it’s really inexpensive if you know where to find them. We actually got these off Amazon! While they can be almost $6 a piece at places like Home Depot, we found them for as cheap as $11.99 on Amazon for a pack of 10. You really can’t beat that kind of deal!

Drawer Pulls:

Rob ordered these drawer pulls for me as part of my Christmas gift to finish the dresser, so I can’t say if these are the exact ones linked below. But, they’re twins if they’re not. [AFFILIATE LINK]

Drawer Pulls 10pcs, XSHION Vintage Shell Shaped Knobs Decorative Kitchen Cabinet Furniture Dresser Handles Iron – – Dark Copper

After!

Here’s an after photo of the dresser all finished! It’s almost hard to believe that it’s the same piece. I am in love with how it came out, and it fits perfectly with our home’s style and design. It’s the perfect piece to start the putting together of our farmhouse guest room. I can’t wait to see the life it lives over its next 15 years!

I hope you loved seeing this farmhouse guest room dresser transformation. Not to mention, I hope it inspires you to give one of your home’s furniture pieces a new life. Make sure to pin the image below to save this project for later!