Moody Blue Dresser

NEW DRESSER! That’s right - I’m finally breaking my radio silence to bring you a fresh flip. A lot has happened since I last debuted a piece so I am WELL overdue to get back on here. Let’s do a quick bottle episode to recap what’s been keeping me from workshop all year:

Jan 2021 Took a new role at my day job and found out we were pregnant with No.2
March 2021 Started house hunting
May 2021 Kicked-off a string of unexpected health challenges culminating with my husband’s mysterious partial hearing loss
July 2021 Moved into the new house
Oct 2021 Had another baby

Whew. It’s doesn’t seem like much when you distill it down to bullet points but it was enough to keep me from tackling many new projects or sharing any of the ones I did. Maybe I’ll get around to posting about those before the new year, but in the meantime I at least have a pop of color to splash on here. Dusting off my old MO, let’s start with a quick before:

If you thought that dresser looked familiar, then good eye!

It is from the same line as the one and only 2020 Flip List Item I shared in August of last year.

Yup, in the turbulence of the pandemic, I shared one flip list item and then completely abandoned my furniture goals of 2020. I didn’t even pick up the mantle to set any goals for 2021. But, I am trying to be gentle with myself. And as I have stated from the get-go, my annual Flip List comes with automatic grace if I fail or falter.

If you’ve been following my work for a while, you may already know that I often like to preserve wood finishes as often as I can. I’ve been painting furniture since 2013 and have come to appreciate a beautiful wood grain over time - mostly because I can appreciate how much work it is to strip a painted piece to restore it back to its wooden skivvies. I typically choose what to paint on a piece and what to leave alone based on repairs. If the veneer is damaged or a drawer chipped, they I am likely using a high-performance wood filler which will never blend in perfectly if left un-painted.

Inspired by MCM Furniture Designer Arne Vodder,

I chose a moody blue. This dresser is serving as a pop of color in our guestroom/ nursery.

And this piece had all that and a laminate top. So I painted the body in Nocture Blue by Behr - adding wood legs to match the sculpted divots for the finger pulls which I left in the original wood finish.

To me, a dresser without legs feels like you might as well leave your clothes in a box on the floor. I think the leg-lift allows a piece to not feel as heavy in a space and for-sure makes vacuuming the dog hair easier (if that’s your vice).

I ordered the same legs as it’s 5-drawer sibling but had some challenges upon install. These legs require the mounting hardware to be inset. Which means I need to drill a hole big enough to sink in a threaded brace that I can screw the leg into. I didn’t want the brace or the attachment screws to poke through the bottom of the dresser and compromise the bottom drawer’s functionality so I tried to inset them as close to the corners as possible where the inner frame of the dresser would provide more wood to screw in to.

A lot about what I do is trial and error

which is all part of the creative process. Fun fact, I accidentally screwed shut the bottom drawer of this map chest by installing the legs with the wrong length screws. I didn’t realize until the buyer came to pick up - which was t-minus 10 minutes before I was supposed to leave for the airport to go visit my sis. I had NO TIME to fix it and was mortally embarrassed. Luckily the buyer was handy and wasn’t intimidated by the quick fix and was willing to still buy it with a discount.

This dresser had a slight lip that prevented the wide legs I chose from screwing in flush to the base.

Leaving the legs like this would completely compromise their stability so I ended up cutting some scrap wood to recess into base.

I could then sink the mounting hardware into the scrap wood and attach the legs safely.

Since our guestroom is doing double duty as a nursery, I styled this piece with some of my favorite children’s books.

The illustrations are so beautiful that I put them on display using pant hangers (another frequently deployed trick of mine).

And in case you’re pondering the dimensions of this piece for scale, it’s a smidge taller than Huntleigh.

I’m a little rusty, but happy to be in the workshop again. As I mentioned earlier, I do have a few retro-active projects to share that got lost in flurry of house-hunting/ moving/ baby-birthing. I hope you all are well and will pop by again for more reveals.

Gel Stained Dresser | 2020 Flip List Item No.1

In this world of consumption, it grounds me to create instead. I think that’s probably why you’re here too is it not? To get inspired by what you can make out of the world’s sloppy seconds? Or open your eyes to what can be rescued from the dump?

Sometimes it feels like we live in what I call a “Disposable Culture”. Things aren’t really made well enough to last and it doesn’t matter anyways because you can instantly replace it on a whim. If there’s one thing this pandemic has taught me it’s that almost anything you want is available for delivery and on demand. But I wonder how our consumerism affects what we find value in. On the one hand, I can’t complain because I’m in the business of making things from what no one else wants. But on the other hand does the ease we can waste and replace lessen our concept of worth… and how far does that infection go?

Stories like George Floyd’s haven’t been lost on me. I couldn’t bring myself to watch the footage because I knew how wrong it was.

No person should be disposable.

As a middle-class white woman, I can’t say that I’ve felt the knee of the BIPOC struggle. And it’s a hard pill to swallow. My color automatically classifies me as a contribution to society. And not everyone is afforded that luxury.

I know, I know.  I don’t normally open up about such galvanizing topics here at SMH.  And if you came here for the furniture, I will get to that. It seems trivial to keep using this platform just to talk about design and not first acknowledge that. After all, it has been a true joy for me to find the value in what others may have dismissed.

Can’t we all try to do the same in each other?

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Last year, I stumbled across a free dresser on the Facebook marketplace. It was a little beat up. It was missing the original legs. And the family had no use for it because the daughter was tired of the family hand-me-downs. I wanted the chance to restore it so I scooped it up and hoarded it in the workshop for a few months, and eventually added it to the 2020 Flip List to hold myself accountable.

But like most things in 2020…

Things did not go exactly as planned.

It was in overall good shape - I only had to add legs and repair some damage to the trim work. The wood grain was so beautiful that I didn’t want to do my usual finish. But the location of the repairs would make it tricky to match the original walnut stain. I still love to play with contrast in details so I decided to try gel staining for the first time. I chose a black stain that I hoped would allow me to mask the compound repairs on the trim while darkening the wood grain instead of loosing it to a flat paint finish.

I was loving what I was seeing! The blacken body helped play up the warm wood in the legs and highlight the sculpted details on the trim work. Yes everything was going according to plan.

Or so I thought…

See, I blatantly ignored the instructions on the can of gel stain choosing to seal it with my go-to soft wax finish instead of the recommended polyurethane. And as I applied the first coat of wax, I found that most of the dark stain I had painstakingly left to cure for 36 hours was wiping right off!

Now it wasn’t the end of the world but it certainly wasn’t the finished look I was imagining for this piece. Don’t get me wrong, the gel stain still did it’s job and overall darkened the existing wood grain while masking all of my repairs. I can still count it as a win, but I had wanted more contrast between the black stain and the warm walnut details.

Instead this dresser ended up with a moody finish from the varied shades of black stain.

Although the finished product wasn’t intentional, this was a valuable learning process for me. And ultimately, I’m glad I took the risk even if it didn’t turn out the way I had imagined. I still spared this piece from a trip to the dump - and found a way to keep it relevant in this new-is-always-better world.

It still celebrates the warm walnut tones but in a more rugged way than my signature matte paint finish.

For styling, I deconstructed a Thonet rocking chair. I know that may be a crime to some, but to me was a crime of opportunity - I’m just in love with those cane shapes!

This piece has sold.

But if you are interested in a custom order like it, email me at cate@stylemutthome.com

If you’ve read this far, thank you. Thank you for letting me share my raw thoughts along with my finished pieces. I appreciate having this space to be creative and honest and I hope you are continually inspired to do the same. It takes courage to be vulnerable. But I think that makes for good soil to do some beautiful things.

Catch up on the 2020 Furniture Flip Bucket List

Easy-Glide Dresser + Art Sugar

There are pros and cons to tackling a refinishing project for a dresser that is not actually vintage:

1) Usually the dressers aren’t made of solid wood.
2) Sometimes that means it’s too difficult to remove the drawers for easier transportation
3) On the plus side, they more often than not have smoother gliding drawers than their older counterparts

Like Mr. Easy-Glide here:

I liked his clean lines and tapered legs but he is definitely an assemble-yourself number. All his guts are labeled with little A-G alphabet stickers. But what you loose with newer construction, you gain with functionality. And these drawers slide like a pad of butter on a hot skillet. So he was worth a second look in my opinion - and a second chance to stand out.

My go-to secret for instantly updating a dresser is usually adding legs. But Mr. Easy-Glide already had a decent set of gams.

So I deployed my next go-to trade secret: change the pulls placement. Instead of leaving them dead-center, I changed the pulls and moved them to be perched right at the top of each drawer. It’s a very subtle move, and patching in the old holes meant painting the body, but it allows for a fresher take on a standard box store dresser.

For the body color I chose “Swiss Coffee” - an StyleMutt staple I might add, but usually for wall color. I decided to try it on this piece because 1) I needed a warm white to play well with the wood tones and 2) I had plenty of it lying around ;)

The dresser is actually painted the same color as the wall here - see how beautifully it holds both light and shadow? We love this color because it’s like a living neutral. It’s not devoid of personality just because it’s white.

And yes - that’s a cameo from my cantilever chair flip.

I asked him to step in as a supporting roll to some fall foliage and my new favorite pieces of art: these two Art Sugar abstracts by Caroline Orr.

You know you’re getting happy mail when the box has Sugar in the name. And opening these art pieces when they arrived was like unwrapping some confiscated Halloween candy. I’m talking KING sized bars if you’re picking up what I’m laying down.

Known mostly for their pop art prints, Art Sugar has prints in multiple sizes supporting a myriad of artists - with a portion of each purchase going to charity. Their prices are affordable but if you’re not sure, you can even rent one of their pre-framed pieces for 90 days to make sure you’re in love with the look.

When I saw Caroline Orr’s abstract collection, I didn’t need 90 days. Caroline’s watercolor shapes, whispered handwritings, and torn paper mixed media all spoke to me. And most notably her strong moments of color! I believe that when you bring art into your home, it should elicit a guttural response - otherwise it’s just wall filler.

Together, they were the inspiration of my whole vignette - Tupelo Honey with his mossy greens and pops of blue…

And Etta James with her soft pinks and bold red and orange accents. They demanded a visually striking foliage that could handle their spotlight so what better than some maple branch clippings in peak fall colors?

If you’re shopping for ready-to-hang artwork, check out some of their fun and sometimes cheeky prints.

And if you’re shopping for a fresh dresser, email me for more about our purchase and shipping options.

Easy-Glide Dresser
Now Available for Sale
54"L x 16"D x 34"H
$695


If you are interested in this piece or a custom order like it, email me at cate@stylemutthome.com