THANK YOU Hand-Me-Down Dresser Gods

Back in April, I pleaded with the hand-me-down dresser gods for, well, a hand-me-down dresser! One that would be inexpensive and I could pretty-up and to put in our guest room. I definitely could've gone to Ikea or Target and bought a semi-inexpensive dresser for the room, but I wanted to get something that had a little more character, was even cheaper, and one I wouldn't feel bad about painting (especially if it didn't turn out well).

Well, the hand-me-down god of Craigslist answered my pleas and I scored this 9-drawer beauty for a cool $100.

For some reason I only took one "before" shot. With my phone...

Ok, so the $100 was a little more than I wanted to spend, but the dresser was perfect for what I was looking for and, honestly, I was already getting impatient with my search.

Of course I didn't want to keep the dresser as-is. While I'm sure it looked really nice back in the day, it definitely needed some TLC for my taste in the form of a fresh coat of paint and some new, updated (and matching) pulls. Now, I'm not going to give you a how-to on how to paint furniture because 1) this is the first real piece of furniture I've painted so I'm definitely no guru by any means, and 2) there are other great how-to's online by much more experienced DIYers like Young House Love and Centsational Girl that I would definitely recommend consulting over me (I pretty much followed their steps anyway)! But, I will tell you what I did. I painted the dresser Behr's Powdered Snow and added some 4-inch oil-rubbed bronze (even though they look black) cup pull handles. And, let me tell you, 4-inch pulls are hard to find! I ended up having to order ours online because there was a very limited selection of 4-inch pulls at our local hardware stores (I guess 4-inch pulls are a rarity?), and I definitely did not want to drill new holes and fill in the old ones (that's waaaay too much work for me!).

Anyway, instead of a how-to on painting furniture, I figured I'd show you some pictures of how this little hand-me-down dresser really helped (begin to) complete our guest bedroom. Here's a view of the room opposite the dresser . . .

. . . and here's the dresser!

Now, to "complete, complete" the room all I have to do is find a large mirror to go over the dresser, accessorize the space a little better, and the guest room will be pretty much done! I know it's been a long process to read about since we painted the chevrons on the wall waaaaay back in August, but thank you for being patient readers (and some of you, visitors) and know that it's almost done! (and we can move on to do projects and write about other areas of our house! Yay!)

Dear Hand-Me-Down Dresser Gods

Dear Hand-Me-Down Dresser Gods,

I am searching for a lovingly-cared-for-but-no-longer-wanted dresser for our guest bedroom. I would love to have it in time for my parent's visit in mid-May so that I can progress in "finishing" our guest bedroom. See, it just looks so bare without some kind of a dresser to store linens, travel products, and other knick-knacks.

Said dresser would look fabulous with an equally wonderful mirror above it and those lovely aqua-spray-painted thrift-store sconces on either side of it, adorned with crisp white candles.

I am looking for something like these that I can "upcycle" with a nice coat of paint and some new hardware.

Can you please request that the DC area Craigslist, Goodwill, and other area thrift stores that I frequent make some available for me to purchase? Preferably in the $40-80 dollar range, with working drawers, solid construction, and maybe some detail work?

Also, I would love love to happen upon some kind of entry-way table, like these . . .

. . . and a metal bar cart, like this (since my lovely sister nabbed our grandma's!).

Sincerely, your project-starved patrons,

Kristin (and Chris)

Love me some chevrons!

As I promised, I am finally writing about the progress on our guest bedroom - namely the walls. When we moved into our home a year ago, this is what our sad sad guest room looked like . . .

At the time, I had no idea what I wanted to do with the room. The linens were from my college days, during my shabby chic-phase, and I didn't necessarily want to keep those around . . . So, I started looking for inspiration. I knew I wanted to incorporate a seafoamy-green type of color because not only is that color throughout our entire house, but we were also going to be putting our old living room rug, which has sefoam-y flowers on it, in the space. I was instantly drawn to these images that I found in my search.

Decor Pad.

Coastal Living.

I loved the more traditional styles of the Decor Pad room with the modernity and youthfulness of the Coastal Living room and decided to attempt to throw them together. The first step was going to be painting the bedroom a light yellow. Martha Stewart's "Custard"-yellow, to be exact.

After I finished painting, I was pretty "meh" about it. It seemed just a smidge too yellow for my taste. The room isn't that big, and it just looked like a big yellow box. I felt stuck and wasn't sure what to do to tone down that yellow...That is, I felt stuck until I saw this nursery on Pinterest:

Found on Pinterest. Originally from Ohdeedoh.

The chevron pattern was just too too awesome! I found myself going back to my board just too look at it. Swoon. It definitely brings out a more modern and youthful edge to the room, no? And luckily, Chris was totally on board with painting a chevron in our guest room. My husband is pretty cool.

It all started with a plan:

Yup, we measured the wall, and Chris even took into account the, er, irregularities of the wall. i.e., it is not a perfect rectangular wall, it's more of a parallelogram (I never thought I would ever type that word) with the height and width of the wall being off by an inch. My math-genius hubby though figured it all out and started drawing the points of the chevron pattern for us to tape off.

Yup, he needed a t-square and a level.

Once the "points" were all drawn out, we connected the "dots" with painter's tape.

Ta da!

Then, I got my paint on.

We burnished the edges of the tape with a credit card (classy, I know), but I ended up applying 3 coats of Martha Stewart's "Pot of Cream" paint because I was very very paranoid that there would be seepage and the lines would not be crisp. That would definitely have been a waste of an afternoon! Fortunately though, it turned out perfect, and I am so so in love with the results!

Swoon.

Now, if you remember correctly, earlier this week, our guest room looked something like this:

Yucky.

I took a break from my TV watching though ; ) and cleaned it all up. It actually looks like a room again. Drumroll please . . . .

Now obviously the room is not complete. It definitely needs some curtains, and we really really want to do a DIY headboard (thanks to Running from the Law's tutorial) with a similar seafoam/turquoise fabric. The side table will be going, and unfortunately, probably the "mid-century modern" chair Chris made in the corner (it's too big). I'll be upgrading the lamp and adding some wall art soon, and, I've been looking for a dresser to put on the opposite wall of the bed for some linen storage and such. But, it is technically in shape for some visitors (hint, hint). It isn't too bad right? I know I'm not any kind of major designer or anything, but I'm pretty proud of my skillz so far.

Oh, and you might be wondering about the yellow blanket at the foot of the bed. I know it's kinda dingy, but after this photo was taken I covered the entire bed with it to avoid the white duvet being covered in cat hair. Because, well, as you can see below, a certain cat - Teddy - decided to climb up under it . . .

See the lump. Yup, that's him.

So, that's our chevron wall and guest room, all ready for it's first guests!!