February 28, 2022
Years ago, I bought a 1950’s dresser online for $50. When we went to pick it up, the seller ended up being a sweet family – the adult daughter was helping her parents streamline their home. And when they saw our two young boys bouncing around in the back of the truck, they offered up two matching twin bed frames and wouldn’t take any more money for them. The dresser and one of the beds were painted BRIGHT blue, the other bed was painted avocado green but was chipping very badly.
Flash forward probably 8 years and I hadn’t done anything with them. We’d stored the bed frames (taking up valuable storage space we couldn’t really spare) and kept the dresser bright blue. I dared Husband to get rid of those bed frames – even though I wasn’t doing anything with them. I was working full time, we had kids’ sports and other activities, and in truth, I’m lazy. But since we moved in 2020, I haven’t worked outside the home. So I had time to paint!
I can overthink a project to death. But not the kind of overthinking that’s useful. I get caught up on how it’s going to look and obsess about it, without making any actual progress. I WISH I obsessed about something useful, like HOW to do the project, but no… *SIGH*. So, I finally just decided to get some black paint, and try my hand at some DIY leather handles. I used my go-to Zinsser B-I-N Advanced primer (probably should have had that tinted – oh well). I think I ended up doing three coats of paint from Lowe’s matched to SW Tricorn Black and a few coats of my favorite topcoat – Polycrylic in Satin finish. Also, because I didn’t sand, all of the brush strokes from prior paint jobs and chipped paint that I painted right over showed through – I know, duh, but I’m just being honest here. I’ll also add here that I started this project in early December and didn’t finish it until mid-January. In fact, for Christmas, it was both blue and black because I hadn’t finished painting it yet.
Next I needed to figure out how to do the leather handles, and more importantly, what parts I needed. I ordered this leather strapping from Amazon for about $22 so I figured even if I messed it up, I wouldn’t be out too much dough. I still needed to find the decorative screw covers I wanted to attach the handles with. I scoured the hardware aisles at my local big box stores and couldn’t find what I was looking for – I later learned they’re called screw posts. I didn’t trust I’d be able to rely on the descriptions on Amazon so I decided to keep looking. We have an amazing local ACE hardware store about 20 min from our house so I went there and they were SO helpful! I’ll spare you the nitty gritty details but for a variety of reasons, I ended up having to go there three times before I was able to get all the things I needed. I don’t have a link for the screw posts, sorry.
When deciding how wide I wanted my strap handles to be, I made sure to allow additional length so you could actually put your hand under the strap and use it as a handle. Then I measured the length out and sketched out the rounded edges in pencil on the back side of the strapping. Finally, I traced out the number of straps I’d need then used my not-sharp-enough regular old scissors to cut the leather handles and round the corners. We used an electric drill to make the holes in the straps. (I say WE because Husband helped me with this, I couldn’t get the hang of the right amount of pressure and speed and messed up quite a few practice attempts). The drill bit made the holes a little messy but I wasn’t too worried because I knew the screw posts would cover those imperfections. I was trying to stay very low budget on this makeover, however, if I were to do this project again, I would definitely invest in the proper leather tools which you can usually find at your local craft store.
I’m glad I didn’t sell this little dresser on FB Marketplace like I’d originally planned because it is so darn cute now! And you hardly notice the ‘mustache’ detail on the bottom. My son pointed that out to me once and now I can’t unsee it. Do you see it?!
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Dont Should on Me 