Navy blue painted dresser makeover

You might be a bit surprised at this post.  See I bought a dresser at a yard sale (that part is NOT surprising at all since I currently have like 5 dressers in my home that I bought at a yard sale or flea market )  BUT, I actually painted the dresser something other than WHITE!  

I actually found this dresser on a facebook yard sale site.  Do you have those in your area and are you a member of them?  You totally should check into.  I find that I feel much safer dealing with someone on facebook vs. Craigslist.  I can see their profile picture, I can click over to their profile, and see they have a family, etc. from whatever info they have public on their facebook page, and you can tell that they have been on facebook for a while and it is not just some fake account someone created last week.  I still usually screenshot our conversations about meeting times (and always try to meet at a public place for smaller items or take my husband with me) and text it to either my husband or a close friend.   Anyways to find some in your area just type in the name of your city or surrounding cities plus yard sale or flea market in the search bar on facebook and you will probably see several groups pop up – request to join – and then you can either browse what other people have posted for sale or post your own items for sale. 

So anyways you know I have a love for French Provincial furniture so I was hoping to find a smaller chest dresser hopefully in that style in the $15-30 range.  I think I paid $25 for this.

I needed a small dresser to use for my nephews clothes and for my 2nd guest bedroom and this one was the perfect size.  Pretty lines but not too girly – well, once I painted over those flowers and removed those quite out of date pink ceramic knobs.

Ready for the not-white after?!

So here is what is looks like now!

Perfect for a little boy and even though I am a white/lots of neutral girl I just love this dresser this color. 

The paint color is Compass Blue by Behr Marquee and it is the perfect dark navy blue.  It actually looks a bit darker than these pictures. 

I just painted it with small roller and gave it 2 light coats and used a brush to get in any of the grooves or small areas.  I need to put a clear coat on the top – in fact I need to do that on all my recent painted pieces – so maybe I will do a post on that soon.

And those handles… SUCH an improvement from the pink ceramic ones.    They are just some I had one hand that I actually picked up at a yard sale intending to use maybe in a bathroom or on a piece of furniture one day.  But you can find cup pulls like this at Home Depot or at my favorite online hardware site  – DLawless Hardware.  These cup pulls are very similar and a great price.  I would have liked to do 2 pulls on each drawer but the holes were already there and perfectly spaced to fit these in the middle so I just left it instead of filling and making new holes. 

I actually painted the lamp (it was a thrift store brass lamp like this) before I knew I was going to paint the dresser NAVYand the lampshade came from a yard sale that way but I may change the lamp to red and the ribbon ON the shade to navy to give it a bit more contrast.  But overall I LOVE how this room has turned out – I will show you the whole room soon.  It is a playroom/craft storage in the closet/my nephews room when he is here room. 

So if you are like me and you sort of get stuck in a habit of always painting something a certain color, maybe switch it up and try something new!  It’s only paint and could always be painted over.  I actually would love to add some black painted furniture in our new house.  I think that can be stunning even in neutral rooms. 

Sarah at Thrifty Décor Chick is one of my favorite bloggers – actually the first DIY/home blogger I started following.  And her black or dark painted furniture mixed with her neutral and lots of white trim/accessories/décor always inspires me.  I hope to create this look in our next home if it will work in our space…

So what have you painted recently?  Do you tend to always paint furniture white or do you mix up the colors?