You all can recall when we talked about the sweet rug I scored from Ikea…right?  (You better, that was only 3 days ago…)  Well, during our adventure in dreamland, I found the most perfect dresser EVER.  Actually 2 perfect dressers.  One with wiggly handles (the gray one) and one with a spot for my bras, underwear and socks (TMI? I just like my delicates to be organized ).

Can you hear the angels singing and see the sunlight streaming in on them??  I can.  They’re a beauty.  And $200.  The one on the right (the Birkeland) is on sale for $200…it’s originally $300. (The one on the left is the Edland.)  Yes, I know $200 isn’t really all that much to spend on a dresser but when you like to spend more money on the clothes you wear and not so much on the dresser in which you’re clothes sleep, than $200 is a lot.

This is what is currently in my house.

{images used via ikea.com}

I bought it immediately after graduating college and liked it until I started babysitting for a family who had it in their BABY’S room and saw it popping up everywhere in nurseries.  Umm…hi, I’m 27….I finally have a big girl job and a big girl apartment, it’s time for a big girl dresser.

I still didn’t like that $200 price tag though so that got me thinking.  What if I found an old dresser and painted it and made it look all fantastic and used that instead?!  Craigslist has about 100 dressers posted each day I’m sure I can find one in a week or so right?

I also scoured the internet for some fun looking dressers for inspiration.  Here are a few I found…

You all know my love for turquoise so this is an obvious fav…

{image via design style guide}

A sweet vintage looking one to go with my old-school looking trunk…

{via design sponge}

A fun vibrant one to go with my new bedroom (I bought a gray comforter and getting tons of fun pillows and things to accent)….this would work perfect!

{via design sponge}

And here is one that I could actually probably do with my current dresser.  What do you think???

{image from domestic ease}

The amazing Kristin over at Domestic Ease gives full instructions on how to do the map dresser.  If you’ve never been over to her blog you should probably do so.  It’s all about taking what you have and improving it rather than outright buying new stuff.  Our kind of girl!

All right, people, what are your thoughts?  Try to revamp the dresser I already own?  I’m not sure how great that will be since it’s basically plastic…but spray paint adheres to everything, right?  Or should I just search craigslist for a new dresser, sell the old on craigslist and do a little dresser makeover?

Who’s dying to see how my trunk is turning out?  We know Erin is.    We’re dying to show you guys so here we go.

Here is what the trunk looked like when I got it.

Here’s were our thoughts going into it:

1. Keep the color, but clean it up a ton.

2. Get 2 belts for the top to connect to the buckles on the bottom.

3. Cover the inside with fabric.

We thought it’d be nice to keep the same color and just clean it up a bit so we got some cleaners and went to town.  We scrubbed with rags and brushes and a bunch of different kinds of cleaners.  And…nothing really happened.  It was still sort of a mess. We knew it was clean but it didn’t look much better.

So then we got out some sand paper and tried sanding it. We thought we could give it a more rustic look but nothing really happened with that either.

Hmmm….that sort of kicked plan number 1 to the curb so we decided we’d spray paint it and get it all one color and nice and cleaned up.

While we were scrubbing with the brushes we discovered that they had just painted over leather straps on the bottom.  We began scrubbing the heck out of them to try to get all the paint off.

About halfway through we decided we would just cut them off and buy 2 sets of belts and make a new strap.  So that’s what we did.

We cut off the straps on the top and the bottom before realizing that they were tacked in underneath metal covers.  We had 2 options here.

1. Keep the metal covers on and cut up the belts and make them look like the were one long one.  Or

2. Take off the metal cover and put the belts on whole.

Well, we had bought new tacks to tack on the belts and we were going to paint it anyway so we decided to just pull of the metal covers and get the old belts completely off and put the new ones on correctly.  In the process of pulling these covers off we realized they weren’t metal….they were simply painted leather!  Sweet!  It took a few hammers, screw drivers and a crowbar but we finally got all of the tacks and leather off of the trunk.  It was quite the workout.

After they were all off we sprayed 2 coats of spray paint all over the trunk.

Then we ate some cheesecake.  And drank coffee.

Then after letting it dry for oh, 20 minutes we decided we would finish the outside.  Katie and I are activators and like to get things done even if it means staying up until 3 in the morning.  Lucky for us it was only about 11:00pm at this point so we went at it.  We had ended up buying 8 belts so we went through option after option until we came up with one that we liked.

The plan was to use 2 belts for the top and then 2 belts for the bottom.  We couldn’t use one belt for the left and one belt for the right because they weren’t long enough so we had to mix and match.

So we cut up 4 belts and tacked them onto the trunk.

When they were on we decided it needed something extra so Katie quickly spray painted one of the belts, we cut it up and tacked those on over the belts in the same spot that the other leather pieces were.  (Again, any normal person would have spray painted the belt, wait 24 hours for it to set and then proceed with cutting and tacking on.  We are not normal.)

Perfection.  We LOVE it.  It was quite a bit of work but the outside look so sweet.

The inside is still up in the air.  Initially I planned on doing fabric.  That changed when I had an old Bible that was going to end up in the trash (it was too beat up to donate and I have 3 Bibles so I didn’t need it…it sounds awful though that I was going to throw it anyway…).  Katie had the great idea to cut up the pages and modge podge them into the inside.

So we started cutting and modge podging.  (We being Katie while Marnie and I worked on the outside.)

We finished the inside shelf thing that pulls out.  We had to wait on the actual inside since the paint still hadn’t dried (and it was midnight).

When we put it in the trunk to see how it looked I had second thoughts.

It reminded me of old newspaper that was just stuck in there…not a fabulous Bible full of verses.  It didn’t give it that “finished feel”.

This is where I need your help.  Should we continue on with the Bible verses?  Switch to fabric?  Katie thought maybe staining the pages before modge podging them would make it look cool.  I just don’t know.  Help!!  Either way we know that it is easy to redo it (or easy enough…) so it really isn’t a make it or break it type of situation but I’d still love your insight.  I know we have lots of creative people out there who read PPS!

We aren’t going to show you the whole thing because right now it is just sitting in Katie’s garage so pictures won’t do it justice.  When it we are finished with the inside and have it moved into my new place we’ll show you the rest.

So what do you think??  Is the process looking good?  Any ideas you have for us??