Hi everyone!

It’s Fun Project Friday!

I was browsing through one of the local antique shops in town and found this small 3-drawer dresser. As soon as I saw it, I knew it had to come home with me! So I bought it…

I purchased the drawer pulls before I started painting, mainly because I wanted to match the paint to the knobs instead of trying to match the knobs to the paint.

The dresser was already stripped, so it really just needed a final sanding. I removed the wooden knobs, filled in the holes with wood putty, and gave it a good sanding. Once that was done, I primed everything with white primer.

And here’s where it got frustrating… I knew that I wanted to transform this piece into a faux apothecary chest. I did some research and it looked pretty easy, so I decided to give it a try. To get the 3 across-3 down pattern, I had to do some math to come up with the measurements for the frames.

I bought some really cool bamboo-looking trim at the local trim outlet. Then I began cutting the 90 degree angles to construct each frame. The PROBLEM was that I had only purchased three 8 foot pieces of this trim… which, unfortunately, was enough to construct just 8 frames… and I needed 9!

Naturally, I had chosen a trim design that was not one of their “stock” pieces, so I had to special order another one!

Two weeks later, I finally had all the frames cut and constructed. I chose the paint colors to match the knobs, then primed, painted, and distressed each one.

Next, I placed the frames on the drawers to get the correct spacing and traced the inside of each frame with a pencil. I ran painter’s tape along the pencil lines to mask off the inside squares, thinned down some dark acrylic paint with clear glaze, and used a cotton cloth to “wipe” it across the dresser and drawers. Once that was dry, I removed the tape and applied some crackle medium to the inside squares, then painted each square accordingly… to match the frame color.

I attached the frames to the drawer with glue and brads, drilled holes in the center of each color block, installed the new knobs, gave everything a good coat of paste wax, and…

Voila! A faux apothecary 3-drawer dresser!

Pretty cool, huh?!?

I think the only thing I would do differently would be to use a MUCH darker paint color for the dresser and drawers (oh… and to make sure I have enough trim BEFORE I start a project…) but other than that, I LOVE the way it turned out!

So… what do you think?!? Just CLICK ON THE LINK ABOVE and LEAVE A COMMENT!

Enjoy…

Lynn