Batter Up Dresser

If ever a project made me want to hang up my DIY gloves forever, this was it. It was so much more work than I anticipated, but a lot of it was my own fault. I paid $20 dollars for an ugly, horribly painted dresser and I poured hours of work into it. I spent more time than I can remember sanding this monstrosity down and getting rid of the thick, lumpy black paint that someone had slapped on it.

Then I painted it a solid off white. I paint furniture with a roller brush whenever possible. It goes on faster and looks better. 

Since this was going to be a baseball themed dresser for a little boy's room, I didn't think the scalloped piece at the bottom was appropriate. I knocked it off pretty easily with a hammer. Later I replaced it with a solid board, and it definitely looked more masculine. 

I wanted the end product to look like a well used, grungy baseball. I used Trewax (because I had it on hand. Anything similar will do) in Indian Sand color to help achieve that look. I applied it in streaks and then rubbed it with a cloth to help get the effect I wanted.  

I layered Old English over that to add a brown tinge over the red. 

I've said it before on this blog, but I am not an artist. I was so worried about how I would get the curved lines for the baseball seams. Such an easy solution! I pulled a hula hoop apart, and taped it in place and traced around the curve. Viola! 

I know it's difficult to see, but there are fine pencil lines on the drawers. Because the edges of my drawers were rounded, I taped them off. There is no possible way (for me anyways) to paint straight lines over curved edges. I know this because I tried, and I had to paint over it, re-age/distress and start again! 

Then I used brown acrylic craft paint over the lines and used a cloth to spread it out a couple of inches on either side of my penciled line. (this gives more dimension to the laces) 

Then I CAREFULLY traced over my pencil line with a black paint pen. 

I cannot overstate how difficult it is for me to paint...anything! I tried doing the laces free-hand, but had to start over. These stamps (I use the term loosely) were just cut out of craft foam. I used them to stamp the burgundy acrylic craft paint onto the drawers. Then I went back over them with a paint brush to fill them in. It was labor intensive. 

 Once I was done with that, I took the same brown acrylic paint and used it to "dirty" up the edges. 

I just put the old knobs back on when I was done, but I'll probably replace them somewhere down the line.