Ugly Home Office Makeover – Part 6: The Sweet and Simple Printer Stand Makeover

Happy Palm Sunday!

“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication” – Leonardo da Vinci

Welcome back, y’all!

THIS week’s project is a great reminder that Mr. da Vinci was spot on with his views on simplicity.

The makeover of this cute little printer stand was super simple and straightforward, but added a sweet touch of charm to my now not-so-ugly office. ?.

The Project

The “printer stand” is actually a small dresser I picked up at a garage sale years ago.

I had planned to paint it at some point but never got around to it… until now!

For the makeover, my plan was to paint the dresser a dark base coat, then a second coat of gray and a topcoat of white.

I wanted this little piece to be highly distressed with a rustic, worn appearance and I thought layering colors would achieve this.

Ever the user of on-hand materials, I rummaged through my ridiculously large supply of leftover paint and found this Sherwin Williams Black Bean enamel, previously used to paint a couple of vanities in a rental property.

It’s an oil-based enamel, so I knew a couple of coats would give me a good base for distressing the final coat.

Now, normally painting over oil-based paint with latex without priming is a BIG no-no, but the beautiful thing about chalk paint is that it can go over just about any surface and adheres like glue.

Using one drawer as my guinea pig, I added gray chalk paint…

then white chalk paint, and distressed with steel wool.  And I was thoroughly underwhelmed with the results:

It looked… well, dirty.  Or something. ?

But the beauty of paint is that you get redo’s and painting one drawer only takes about 5 minutes.  I love paint!

So I covered up Mr. Dirty Drawer with another coat of the SW Black Bean, painted the other drawers and lightly rubbed some petroleum jelly on the areas I wanted to distress.

Petroleum jelly is supposed to make it easier to distress by allowing you to rub the paint off with a rag in areas where the jelly was applied.

It didn’t work too well for me and I ended up having to use a block sander, but I think I was too conservative when I applied it??

If you’ve used this method successfully, please share in the comments and let know what I did wrong!!

Next, I painted the body of the dresser.

You can see I wasn’t super concerned with coverage of the base coat, since it was eventually going to be covered anyway, for the most part.

After the base coat had dried – and this took the better part of 8 hours because it was oil-based – I went straight on with the top coat of the white chalk paint – no middle layer of gray this time.

I made the chalk paint with this recipe using a sample pot of Benjamin Moore White Dove mixed in Behr flat paint.  Grand total for the paint: $2.94.

I did modify the recipe slightly this time, using a tablespoon of Plaster of Paris and about 2 tablespoons of warm water.  

I had some trouble with granules of the plaster not dissolving thoroughly in my last batch, and this modification definitely helped!

Here are the drawers after 2 coats of white chalk paint:

Again, I wasn’t worried about perfect coverage because I wanted a distressed look, including some brush marks and darker paint showing through.

Next, I took to the drawers with a sanding block, especially focusing on the areas where I had applied the petroleum jelly.

The paint showing through was way too dark and didn’t look natural, so I used a dry brush technique to tone it down a bit, then sanded with a medium grit sanding block to knock down the “freshness” of the paint.

Dry brushing basically means that you barely dip the tip of your brush into the paint, then brush back and forth quickly and lightly to get a thin coat of paint on the surface. 

It’s a great technique if you’re going for a distressed or shabby chic look, and it’s super easy to do.  Easy = ?!

See the difference?  You can still see the dark base coat in the areas that were distressed, but they’re more subtle now.

Before:

After:

The dresser ended up getting 3 coats of paint.  This is what it looked like after 2 coats.

Compared to oil-based paint, chalk paint dries super fast, so I was able to reassemble the dresser and move it back to my office within an hour of painting the final coat.

I wanted to do one more round of distressing in the natural light of my office.

Using a medium grit sanding block, I sanded the surface areas smooth and distressed the edges a bit more.

The chalk paint dried so hard that I had to use a coarse grit block to do a final light distressing on the flat surfaces.

After sanding, it was time to add a finish.

Normally, I use Johnson Paste Wax to finish chalk painted surfaces.  But as I mentioned in my last post – it STINKS!

I was so happy with the Howard Feed and Wax that I used on the top of my File Cabinet Desk that I decided to give it a try on the printer stand.

This stuff goes on so easily – just squirt a glob on a lint free rag and rub it evenly over the surface, then come back 20 minutes later and buff with another lint free rag.

It gives furniture a beautiful sheen.  And it smells GOOD – no awful fumes for days!

[Tip: I wouldn’t recommend Feed-N-Wax as a final finish for a heavily used surface like a tabletop because it won’t provide the protection of wax or polyurethane]

The final step in the makeover was to accessorize this little cutie with some furniture jewelry.

Of course, I happened to have just the right hardware – 6 of our adorable Oil Rubbed Bronze Cup Pulls! ?

Please standby for a commercial break… 

What do we love about these pulls, you ask?

Well, first of all, they are the perfect touch for farmhouse, shabby chic, contemporary, traditional, vintage design styles – these little babies are versatile!

And our pulls are individually wrapped in double pearl wool, then sealed in plastic to protect them on their journey to their forever homes. ?

Here, I’m cutting the outer plastic open…

Screws and pull are removed from the outer plastic…

Then the pull is removed from the double pearl wool insert and screws are removed from their sealed bag.

See the 2 sets of screws?  We provide 1″ and 1 3/4″ screws to give our customers a couple of size options since drawer face and drawer box thickness vary depending on the piece, design, age, etc.

If you order our pulls and find that neither of the screw sizes works for your project – no worries, shoot us an email and we’ll ship the right size out to you immediately – at no charge to you, of course! ?

Now, back to our show… 

Greg drilled holes for the pulls – spaced 3″ apart – and added them to the drawers for the final touch.

And here she is, all dolled up with some accessories, including a stack of the cute linen bags that we use as the packaging for our pulls.

Yay!!! I love the transformation… and I love even more how EASY this was.

Have you done a similar project?  If so, leave a comment below and tell us all about it!

Now, here is my dilemma… this little dresser will ultimately resume its life as a printer stand – but I kind of hate to put the big ugly printer back on it. ?

What would you do???  Let me know in the comments and you’ll qualify to win this week’s HOMPOW (Home Office Makeover Prize of the Week)!

The Budget

This week was reallllly easy on the budget.

Since I had almost everything on hand, including the drawer pulls, the only expense for this week was the sample paint –  $2.94!!!

After last week’s DIY File Cabinet Desk, $226.20 remained in the budget, leaving $223.26 after this week.  This will need to cover the DIY Industrial Pipe Shelving AND the rest of the accessories.

The end is in sight and I’ve got a nice little buffer in the budget! ?

Materials Used

• Sherwin Williams Oil Based Enamel in Black Bean (about 8 – 12 oz)
• (1) sample pot of Behr flat paint mixed in Benjamin Moore White Dove
• Plaster of Paris and water
• Paintbrush (I used a Purdy angle brush)
• Howard Feed-N-Wax Wood Polish and Conditioner
• 2 old t-shirts/rags (lint free)

Tools Required

• Drill (for drilling holes for the drawer pulls)
• Phillips Head Screwdriver (for attaching drawer pulls)
• Medium and Coarse Grit Sanding Blocks

What’s Next

This project was a nice break from the previous weeks – it was simple and inexpensive but yielded huge results!  ?

• PART 1: Intro
• PART 2: Design Layout and Select Color Palette for Walls, Furniture and Accessories
• PART 3: Paint Walls
• PART 4: Install and Paint Shiplap Accent Wall
• PART 5: Build and Install Desk
• PART 6: Refinish “Printer Stand” Dresser
• PART 7: Build and Hang Industrial Shelving
• PART 8: Add Accessories and Wall Decor
• PART 9: Wrap-up and Big Reveal

The next project in the series is Building and Hanging Industrial Shelving.  This will be the last major project of the series.

And now, it’s time to announce this week’s HOMPOW (Home Office Makeover Prize of the Week) winner.  

Thanks to those of you who took the time to leave a comment last week.  This week’s HOMPOW winner is…

Thanks, Pam, for your kind (and funny!) comment on last week’s post.  Your $25 Magnolia Market e-Gift Card will be in your inbox today!

For the upcoming week’s contest, just leave a comment below on anything in this post and YOU will qualify to win a…

$25 Amazon Gift Card

(Winner announced next week in the Part 7 post)

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