Around the house: Chalk paint dresser makeover

We've refinished a dresser for each of our kids and hope these unique pieces will last their childhoods. Perhaps they'll even hold up long enough to be passed to their own kids. Each dresser came from a crazy secondhand warehouse in Raleigh called Shelton's Furniture. You can find the first dresser here and the second here. Jeff painted the white dresser, and we actually found a guy to finish the blue one for just $100. Who could say no to that?

Since sanding is annoying in general and terrible during pregnancy, I decided to try my hand at chalk paint for the first time. The original brand, Annie Sloan, is expensive and a hassle to find, so I tried Rust-Oleum's new product, which is almost half the price and available at Home Depot. Mistake! I do not recommend it. Somehow brown streaks kept appearing after the paint dried no matter how many coats I layered on. I'm not sure if it was the interaction of the paint or clear finish with the stain underneath or what, but I won't be buying this product again. There are still a couple small brownish spots that I think I'll go back over with a white wood paint marker. That said, I will definitely use chalk paint again in the future. It's probably worth the extra cash and time to get Annie's though. Voila the after shot:

And here's a little sneak peek of one side of the nursery. Wall paint by Jeff (Benjamin Moore's Blueberry), chalk paint dresser by yours truly and beautiful 36 x 48-inch artwork by my favorite creative duo, Cricket and Nora. They painted this picture about two years ago, and we hung it in the dining room of our previous house. They loved the idea of placing it in the nursery as a gift for the baby.

Photos taken with my iPhone. (My tripod is too heavy for me to carry around at the moment...)

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