On furniture "reincarnation", or turning old crap into new beautiful crap

Since becoming obsessed with Pinterest and DIY, I have become trapped in an increasingly fast downward spiral that causes many sleepless nights, restlessly tossing and turning in my sweaty sheets, my mind frantically racing because I just have too many damn do-it-yourself projects to get started on, and not enough time.

Eventually I found myself dragging my body throughout the house on hands and knees, a trail of drool escaping from my lips, with a can of metallic spray paint, trying to find something, anything, that needed a fresh coat of paint.

Perhaps that is a bit dramatic (my best friends know that I'm occasionally willing to dramatize for the sake of an interesting yarn), but I've been recently making lots of spur-of-the-moment hardware purchases, including running to Home Depot one night at 8pm to purchase a jigsaw, so that I could cut apart an old kitchen table to make a desk (it couldn't wait until morning-- by the way, that desk looks rad. More on that later).

Yesterday I decided to take on an old dresser that was contributed to our household by my boyfriend-- the thing journeyed out here to Denver with him from Wisconsin, and despite being a well-traveled and cultured bit of furniture, it was @$$-ugly.

I wish I had taken before photos of this battered gem, but I completely forgot. Here is one of the progress though-- I was painting in the living room.

I sanded this bad boy down, and used some old paint that the 

previous house owners had left-- therefore, it cost me $0.

I used an electric sander to buff off some of the old loose paint, scratches and gouges, and went to town with some old wall paint that the previous owners had left in the closet. My original plan was to slap a couple of coats of paint on there to get 100% coverage, but I ended up really liking it with a bit of the old grey peeping through, so I only used one. Visible paint strokes are OK, they only add to the character.

Then, I used a fine-grade sandpaper (don't use a rough one-- that will leave big angry scratches) over the top. Before painting I had removed the hardware, and I spray-painted it gold and then reattached.

Here is the finished project (with one of my mixed media pieces, "Waking up with mountains in my eyes"), which now resides in the guest bedroom. I also spray-painted the champagne bottle from the house closing, which you can see on top of the dresser. 

I love it. I spent at least 30 minutes between 5 different trips into the guest room "surveying" my masterpiece last night. It's amazing what a fresh coat of paint can do.