One of my favorite home decor tricks is thrifting old furniture, painting it to match my decor … and then using it for a completely different purpose than it was originally intended.
A lingerie chest has been on my thrifting wish list forever. But I wasn’t looking for it to hold undies and socks. I wanted a tall, skinny dresser with lots of drawers to place in my entryway next to my hall closet. My intention is for it to hold hats, gloves and scarves so in the wintertime, we can just open a drawer and easily find all the little things that seem to get lost in the closet.
I found a lingerie chest last month at the Goodwill store in Sterling, Va. and it only cost $40. New lingerie chests cost in the $200 to $400 price range. (Although I did find one online priced at $1,800. No way!)
The Goodwill lingerie chest is the perfect size for my space. However, the drab wood and outdated drawer pulls didn’t match my style. That’s not a problem for me! I would much rather spend my time painting a piece of furniture to add my personal flair than spend my money on a generic new dresser that everyone else can buy.
I started by painting the entire dresser gray. I chose this particular shade because it was an almost-full can of paint already on my shelf and I knew there was enough to do the entire first coat.
I also knew it wasn’t going to stay one color for very long!
On my second round of paint, I chose all the colors from my shelf that I thought would look nice in my entryway. I don’t stress about matching the perfect shades. I’m more of a use-what-you-have-and-it-will-look-great kind of person.
Now comes the fun part! I simply painted — all of the colors, all at once. I used the same paintbrush and sprayed a little water here and there to help the paint glide and blend. Then I just had fun swirling colors together until I liked how it looked.
I really don’t have a detailed tutorial for you to follow for this part, just some advice. Have fun! If it doesn’t look good to you at first, keep painting until it does.
If you don’t like the colors once they are on the piece, paint over it. I found I really liked having swirly clouds of pink on this dresser to brighten up all of the gray. That’s OK. It’s my house. If I want to add a little pink to spice things up, I can.
You can do whatever you love in your house too!
For the finishing touch, I ordered new modern-style black drawer pulls from Etsy.
PRO TIP #1: To figure out the size of your drawer pulls, take the old ones off and measure the distance between the center points of the two holes.
New pulls for all seven drawers cost about $25, bringing the entire cost of this project to $65. That’s a fraction of the cost of buying a new lingerie dresser and it is a one-of-a-kind piece that perfectly reflects my personality and style.
Here’s my finished lingerie dresser!
Well, it’s not 100% finished.
PRO TIP #2: When measuring for new drawer pulls, measure every single drawer!
As you can see in the photo, I did not follow my own advice. I knew pulls for the top drawer were a smaller size than the rest of the drawers. I did not realize—and I did not measure—to see that the two bottom drawers are also a different size. Two of the new handles I ordered were too short to fit the holes.. And the right-sized ones are on backorder.
So it will be a few more weeks until my lingerie dresser turned fabulous entryway storage is finally finished. But that’s OK … as long as it is ready before we need to bundle up in hats and scarves this winter.
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