We are busy preparing for the baby’s arrival in a few weeks’ time! Unfortunately, our loft conversion plans are now on hold until the Spring, but we still need to prepare and work out how and where we will store everything.
Generally, we’ve been trying to re-use things for the little one, and buy second hand or borrow where possible. We are also sticking to a neutral colour scheme as eventually their nursery will be our current bedroom, which was newly painted this year in light tones.
I was really excited when I remembered that we had this chest of drawers! I was given it when I first moved into my own home after university, but it had a rather dated ‘orange pine’ varnish and didn’t fit well with the look and feel of our bedroom. We’d kept it as it is solid wood and we’d been using it to store bits and bobs in the loft. It was scratched and looked a bit tatty, but I thought it would be fairly simple to give it a facelift and match it to the cotbed we’ve been given.
I have to admit, the real work on this was done by D 
. Here’s how you can do this if you’d like to smarten up something yourself:
a) Lightly sand down the chest of drawers by hand with a coarse sandpaper. You don’t need to remove the varnish, you are just trying to give the surface a bit of a ‘key’ for the primer to take onto.
b) Remove the drawers and take the handles off. If you are happy with the handles you have, make sure you keep all the fixings so they can be re-attached later.
c) Paint the outside of the body of the chest and all the drawer fronts with a white wood primer and leave to dry overnight, leaving the drawers out to dry. This gives better coverage for the paint and should prevent it flaking or chipping.
c) Paint the body of the chest white, and use a contrasting colour for the fronts of the drawers. We used Farrow and Ball paints as we had them at home already, in Strong White and London Stone. You may need two coats, depending on the paint; make sure you let it dry fully between coats.
d) Once dry, reattach the handles, line the drawers and you’ll feel like you have a whole new piece of furniture!
I’m feeling quite inspired by how well this has turned out, and I’ll be looking out for old furniture we can facelift in the future rather than buying new. Have you got anything in your house that you’ve refreshed or upcycled?
I love the finished look. I’ve never done anything like this but love the idea of upcycling xx
It’s definitely worth a go, especially if you have something that is the right size, but just doesn’t fit with your other things! I was surprised how simple it was in the end.