Spring came and with it the desire to upgrade the look of the bedroom, which hosted some gems, like a fire engine red dresser and a totally useless IKEA bathroom cupboard that was desperately trying to live up to the demands of clothes storage. I found a $10 lime green dresser at a school fundraiser, thusly relegating the IKEA cupboard to presiding over greater order in our basement storage space. The fire engine red dresser, in its ruddy health, was not to be discarded or moved, but transformed.
I started first by finding new drawer knobs that could be used on both dressers to create a little more furniture harmony in the room. I found that at a store in Norway a bit like
Anthropologie, where it is possible to order new knobs online. I wanted to keep the bedroom rather light, as the room is small, so looked for a paint color in the white family with green undertones and bought paint. We used about 1.5 liters of semi-matte oil based paint for two dressers, be sure not to buy too much as paint is expensivo! Oil paint is great for trim and furniture. In addition, I bought a new roller and a new brush.
On both dressers, Lars and I started by removing the existing wooden knobs and then sanding them, merely to rough up the surface lightly so that it took paint better. I then washed both dressers with a light soap to remove dust (in fact when sanding the red dresser, I wet the surface just before sanding in order to keep red dust down as we were doing this inside). On the light lime green dresser, we skipped the coat of primer as the color was quite light and then over the course of three days we applied three coats (with 24 hour drying time). The red dresser got a coat of primer first and then only required one further coat (and we ran out of paint...).
I think our only surprise was that as we didn't assiduously clean the roller (used for the broad flat surfaces such as top and fronts of drawers), the roller sponge became uneven/a bit prickly and in later coats would rough up the surface a bit. I kind of like the not totally glossy, flat look anyway, and better than opening up white spirit in the apartment to clean the brushes (yuck). Very fun to make something old into something new!!
Here is a rag doll I made from a pattern Sharon sent me, you can find it on http://www.kingpod.com/; click on mailorder; click on pattern six (currently sold out, unfortunately). This doll was certainly one of those projects that required faith to continue. When I first started making the doll, it initially looked like the kind of doll Sauron would want to play with, if he was interested in dolls or had a body. I didn't want to go to bed with it in the apartment....But I pressed on and it took shape quite nicely! I had seen elsewhere that it was good to cut the dress longer than the pattern indicated and had good luck with that. I would also recommend cutting everything slightly larger to facilitate larger seam allowances - the dolls shoes, for example, ended up being quite small because the fabric I was using was prone to fraying and I had to use rather substantial seams to make the shoes sturdy. It's a great way of using odds and ends of fabric, buttons, ribbons etc.
