A "Surreal" Bedroom + Dresser Makeover

One of my sisters lives in a 1950s bungalow duplex that is in pretty rough shape. They bought both duplexes with my parents with the intention of building a triplex (or bigger and better duplex) within a year or so.


It's been 3+ years. 


When they moved in they didn't bother making any major renovations or even painting the place. Why waste money when they planned to be out of there ASAP.


Well in the 3+ years since they've lived there, their family has grown from 3 to 5. And all 5 of them were sleeping in one bedroom in the basement. It was time to do something about this.


The main floor has one bedroom-turned-playroom, which was this horrible pink shade: 

Life Designed

The picture doesn't do it justice. It's terrible.


My sister and her hubby are now moving upstairs to this room and the kids will have the basement to themselves.


We chose Surreal Blue (CIL paint from Home Depot) with primer added to it.

I don't know how this shows up on your computer screen, but it's a medium grey with a blue undertone.

Life Designed

We only painted one coat and it turned out pretty nice.  It's a bit more blue than I wanted but it's growing on me. Anything is better than that pink! Grey, like beige is hard to nail sometimes because of their varying undertones.


Good thing my sister and brother-in-law like blue.

So now comes the dresser makeover.

Before:

Life Designed

Ouch.


My brother-in-law has had this forever. In fact, it used to be his older brother's dresser back in Calgary. 


It's not from Ikea but it might as well be. 


And yes, those are labels on the drawer fronts.


My sister wasn't in the market for new furniture and they were going to just leave this as is until I begged them to let me paint it.


I painted the frame white and mixed white and some left over surreal blue to make a lighter shade of grey. 

Life Designed

Much better! Light and airy which is what this small room needs. 


But are you thinking what I'm thinking?


The handles are killing me....


I stopped at this point because I just couldn't do it. Sometimes all old hardware needs is a good coat of paint. In this case, these cheap plastic handles aren't even worth the cost of spray paint.


But the problem is that hardware ain't cheap and even though it was killing me, my sister and brother in law didn't want to shell out $5-$20 a pull. This thing needs 12 of them. I thought about buying a long pull and centering it on the drawer - cutting down the hardware to just 6 pulls. This is still a possibility but I also have something else in mind! 


In addition to this dresser, they have another one- same style and colour, but taller and just one column of drawers. I was about to paint it the same grey and white but then I realized I have already done something very similar to this before! 


Remember this dresser makeover I did for my other sister's nursery?

Life Designed

Ever have the feeling of "been there, done that"?


Well shoot....now what? 


What's done is done...but thankfully before I started painting their other dresser, I took a moment to think.


Sure, it's laminate and particle board but it's in decent shape and this is most likely going to stick around their home for a while.


Then the wheels started turning...


So...what became of the second dresser and what's my hardware solution?


Check back in later this week for the big reveal!