Dressing a Dresser (My Mum is Moving In - part 1)

My Mum is moving in with us.

update: I started this post much earlier but it wasn't published. She moved in last Saturday.

How exciting! It's such an honour for me*. Gotta get her room ready. Gotta sew her some curtains. Gotta get some furniture pieces in for her. Gotta get new bed linen. Gotta get her little rugs. (I really gotta stop using the word gotta.)

My Mum is so unlike me. She is definitely the 'girlie' kind. And she's cute. Here she is with my son.
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I told you she is cute!

Me? I'm all for rustic, distressed, rough, country style. And I'm a tomboy. Here I am in my shorts, dirty oversized t-shirt, hair up to keep it away from sweaty face, blotches of paint up to my elbows....
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(you didn't think I would post a photo of me like that, did you?! Really!)

So it was with much trial and error I did up her room, all the while feeling stumped cos I had no idea what a girlie kind of person would like - and with much consultation with my also-girlie daughter . (I really should stop using the word cos - cos it's slang and I think I gotta cut down on slang words. Like gotta)

I had this dresser which I thought I could let her have, cos because my bedroom had too many pieces of furniture in it.
While I liked the piece as a whole, I didn't like the wood cos because it was patchy..look at the side of the dresser..


And a close-up of the wood (I gotta have to find out why it was made like this).



At first, I wanted to paint it, and have the wood show through in a leaf motif. (I stuck on stencils I had cut out of cardboard - don't ask. I'm an amateur DIY-er)
But that just didn't turn out right...

I didn't like the leaves cos because they were too 'spiky' - even for me! Great idea, though..gotta have to try again next time, with a different motif.

So back to re-painting and sandpapering off some of the paint.
I have no idea why I used green. Maybe cos because it's a calm colour to walk into your bedroom to, when you want to turn in? I can't imagine walking into a red room!

My girlie-consultant thought her Granny wouldn't like the distressed, vintage look like I had done for the cupboard my husband had rescued from her house months ago. So I gave this one a clean look.

A rug to match (I had already painted the walls a pale grey, and the doors a darker grey).
And then of course, ever since I discovered I have a thing about knobs, I had to change the little ones (they were really little) that didn't make any impact...


to wider ones, darkening the colour, too.





BEFORE


AFTER

Tune in to Part 2 for the complete room make-over.


1. Does anyone know where to get really, really fancy cupboard knobs/handles here in Malaysia?
2. What do you think of my dresser dressed in green? Even if you feel I should have just let.it.be, do let me know. I really wanna want to know what you think.


*Honour your father and your mother, as the Lord your God has commanded you, so that you may live long and that it may go well with you in the land the Lord your God is giving you.
Deuteronomy 5:16