Upcycling furniture for the craft room

For the past year, while I was having difficulty sitting comfortabley,  I have been working on getting more organized in my craft room. I accomplished this in 10 or 20 minute segments, and will have other posts coming up about these projects.

Today I want to show you the beauty of chalk paint on old, mismatched furniture items that are suitable for storage in the craft room.

We had a dark stained pine bedroom suite when we were first married. Forty-five years later, it was really showing all the nicks and scratches that were created over the years by various house movers. Although we were reimbursed for the damage and  replaced the furniture, I kept this one dresser from the set, to use in the craft room. It has lovely deep drawers that easily hold card boxes from Michaels.

My first thought was to chalk paint the dresser white, thereby matching the other painted furniture in my room. But then I read that dark brown or mahogany coloured stains can bleed thru chalk paint, so using an old rough looking  paintbrush, I painted on two coats of KILZ primer. Then I used two coats of Folk Art  Teal textured teal chalk paint that was purchased on clearance at Joannes for $5 a can.  It went on so nicely as it was really thick, and helped to hide the many fine surface scratches. Sadly,  it was a very bright teal and just did not look right in my aqua and teal room.  So I used two more coats of a duller Folk Art "Cascade"  teal chalk paint from Walmart, and then hand painted white in all the cracks and grooves with a fine art paint brush. Two coats of Behr white decorative finishing wax highlighted the white even more so, and I was happy with the end result.

I had a white French Provincial bedroom set that I used in the bunkhouse up at the old RV lot.. When we sold the lot, we had to leave most of the furnishings behind. I was able to keep the desk and desk hutch.

I moved that hutch downstairs to the craft room and painted the outside boards with the same teal chalk technique and then just added a little more paint across the detailing on the front. This hutch was again finished with the white Behr decorative finishing wax.

I had a devil of a time getting a good photo.

Here are some shots of the drawer interiors...
Washi tape and bling on  rolls

Envelopes

More envelopes, varying sizes

Envelopes again...do you think I have enough? Some preprinted card too as well as hessian, aida cloth, linen and others materials and fibers.

I am really happy with the end result. I put two layers of wax on the whole piece and then two more layers on the dresser top. Hopefully this will give a little extra protection to the top, as I usually drag the finished card baskets forward to browse through them!

I had three brushed silver drawer pulls leftover from a previous kitchen remodel. Luckily they fit over the old screw holes. I will have to pick up four more and this project will be done!