Isaac's Dresser!

Another one of our Wichita purchases was a new dresser for Isaac.  While we were living in Utah we were borrowing a dresser from Andy's grandma, but when we moved we needed a new one.

We found this little gem on Craigslist:

It wasn't the most beautiful thing, but it had the one thing I was looking for... drawers on sliders!  I want this dresser to grow with Isaac, so I wanted a dresser with drawers he could easily pull out.  I'm somewhat regretting that because now one of his favorite activities is to open his drawers and pull EVERYTHING out!

When we bought it I knew all it needed was a coat of paint and we'd have a great dresser on our hands that could last us through at least Isaac.

Over Labor Day weekend, we went over to Home Depot and spent some time with the nice paint people over there!  One of the men was VERY helpful and got us just what we needed.  One nice thing about Home Depot is that all their interior paints now are Low-Odor/ No VOC.  It was nice to know we wouldn't have to leave the dresser outside for a few weeks while the fumes died off.

Andy spent the next few evenings doing this out on our balcony:

Our balcony is so small he had to do the drawers first and then he could do the body of the dresser.  If we had been able to fit everything out at once, this would've been a super quick project!  As it was, Isaac was without a dresser for a full week.

The finished dresser:

I'm still contemplating changing out the knobs. I'd rather have handles on the four bottom drawers and possibly some white ceramic knobs for the top drawers. For right now though, we're just glad to not have flower bouquets on his dresser anymore!

We've decided that painting furniture is a much more manageable DIY project than re-upholstering a chair!  The up-front investment isn't too bad.  We spent about $60 in supplies (brushes, paint, primer, etc) and we'll be able to use all of that for other projects down the line.  The actual painting part took maybe 4-5 hours done in 30 minute chunks.

One thing we learned is that there's actually a reason why they tell you not to paint when it's more than 90 degrees outside!  The paint dried really quickly because it was so hot outside.  As a result there are brushstrokes all over, but oh well... live and learn.