How to Distress a Dresser

A few years ago, I obtained a mid-century dresser as family hand-me-down. My Uncle Tim didn't have a place for it, and I needed a dresser in my spare room, so I snatched it up. Fast forward a few years, and our new house didn't have a place in our guest room for the dresser, so I decided to use it as a buffet in the dining room. I love it because it givens me lots of linen storage! However, with wood laminate floors and a wood table, I had too many wood finishes and wanted a the buffet to contrast more in the room (see pic on left). So I decided to paint and distress it. Here's how it worked.

First, I roughed up the original finish with sandpaper and removed the hardware. I had to use putty to fill in the holes from the hardware because we changed the knobs. Then, I painted a base coat of yellow paint (leftover from the kitchen) on the dresser. I made sure to have it plenty thick on the edges, because this is where I would be seeing it the most.

Next, I painted the top coat of a brownish-olive color that picks up some of the accents from the rest of the house and the green in the wall color. I did two coats of this. I used enamel from Sherwin-Williams, but next time I think I might try a different type because it wasn't super easy to scrub off for the distressing part.

Finally, I took sandpaper to the dried top coat along the edges and natural wear lines until I had as much yellow showing through as I wanted. I also used a "rough" paintbrush to give it wear on the top and sides since the enamel was pretty hard to distress on the flat surfaces. Sherwin-Williams has these 2-inch brushes for a buck that worked really well for this. 

To finish the piece, we put on new hardware from Lowe's. I didn't want it to look too new, so I rubbed paint over the pieces and then used a dry cloth to give it an aged affect. The knobs and handles were around $1 a piece, and the paint was about $15, so I did the whole dresser for about $25! Nice, right?