Dresser Refresh | Sunny Side Design

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I’m so excited for this weekend. My sisters and I are taking my dad on a little road trip to southern Utah to see “The Sound of Music” at Tuacahn. Then we are going to Las Vegas to visit my brother and his family. Looking forward to this, we always have so much fun when we are together.

Today we have this gorgeous dresser that we refreshed with a little paint! Isn’t she beautiful! We found it at a vintage market, and while none of us were looking for a dresser she ended up coming home with us. We ended up renting a trailer 😬 to get all our loot home, because we bought so many large pieces.

Stephanie purchased this piece. She immediately fell in love with the beautiful lines, carvings and original beveled mirror. That’s so hard to find!

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–Dresser Refresh

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Let’s take a look at the dresser when Stephanie bought it. We were at a Vintage Market in Northern Utah and Steph spotted this dresser. She immediately fell in love with the shape, size and beautiful lines of this dresser. For some time she had been looking for a smaller dresser that didn’t overwhelm her room. This one was going to be perfect. It had been refinished in a matte black paint and done very well, but that would not go with her new color scheme and coastal theme she wanted for her master bedroom.

It really was such a beautiful piece with the original beveled mirror and all of the beautiful detail around it. It was only going to require a little paint to refresh it.

This was the perfect opportunity to try out our new paint gun. We purchased this for refinishing furniture, but it has come in handy for other projects we have done this summer. We even used it to paint the stucco on the exterior of our home as well as the garage door. It has gotten a lot of use.

I’ve always been a little intimidated by a paint gun. I have tried it a couple of times with a cheap gun and it was a disaster! 😞 After a recommendation from our neighbor we decided to try out this one from Home Depot. We have been so pleased with the results.

The air paint gun we chose is designed to use the power of an air compressor. It was really very simple to get professional results. Let us share how to use a paint gun.

The paint will need to be thinned in order to be applied with a gun. We used a latex paint which we thinned with water. If using an oil based paint it will be thinned with paint thinner. We thinned our paint with 3 tablespoons of water to 1 cup of paint. We found this ratio of paint and water gave us the best results. We mixed the paint and water in a bucket, then poured it through a paint strainer into the paint canister. You want to make sure that there are not any bumps in the paint that might clog the gun. It is recommended to only fill the canister 3/4 of the way full.

Test the paint spray pattern on a piece of cardboard or scrap material. Adjust the nozzle to get the best spray pattern before beginning to paint the furniture.

The manufacturer of our paint suggested thinning the paint at a ratio of 2 tablespoons of water to 1 cup of paint, but at that ratio, we were not getting the results we wanted, so we experimented and added 1 more tablespoon of water, making it 3 tablespoons water to 1 cup of paint. This seemed to be perfect! 😃 It may require a little experimenting depending on the brand of paint. Once you know your ratio it is a breeze to get professional results.

Hold the paint gun 6-9 inches from the surface throughout the stroke and always keep the gun in motion. Apply the paint with slow even strokes, holding it level and perpendicular to the piece.

Stopping the gun in mid-stroke will cause a build up of paint and will result in runs. Also do not fan the gun from side to side while painting. This will cause a build-up of paint in the center of the stroke and insufficient coating at each end.

Pro tip: Start the gun moving at the begining of the stroke before squeezing the trigger. Release the trigger before stopping the gun movement at the end of the stroke. This will ensure that each stroke will blend with the next without showing overlap of unevenness.

We loved the results that we achieved with the paint spray gun.

One other refresh this dresser needed was the drawer pulls. They seemed wrong with the beautiful carving and lines of the dresser. This dresser also had the original brass key holes on each drawer and we felt that the drawer pulls should be similar in color. We found these drawer pulls on an Etsy shop (dreamchinese).

The screws that came with the pulls were a little too long, so we added a nut to take up some of the slack when we installed them on the drawers.

What a difference the new pulls make! They were much more appropriate for the style and age of the dresser and really complimented it.

The color of paint that we used for the dresser is Hale Navy, by Benjamin Moore. We had is mixed at Home Depot in our favorite brand, Behr. This is the same color that the accent wall was painted. If you would like to see the amazing accent wall and complete tutorial click here.