Let me tell you a little something about this dresser….it was very much so unplanned. I received a text from my friend Meghann in the middle of the day that her mom saw a dresser that she thought would look great painted at our local thrift shop…Mind you she didn’t even snap a photo! I think it’s a generation thing but I took her word that it was awesome and I’m sure glad I did! If you know me, when it comes to buying furniture I get all super excited and antsy so I dropped what I was doing and headed to the thrift store and low and behold there she was! A solid mahogany French provincial style dresser. I was so grateful for the text.

You know what the best part is about buying from thrift stores….they load it for you! Although I was left to tie it down and make sure it doesn’t go anywhere. Which honestly a solid mahogany dresser most likely will not budge during transport…I still had to try to figure out my ratchet straps. Thankfully I got home safely with all my goods!

I don’t know if you have ever painted anything mahogany but the truth is…mahogany just doesn’t like to be painted. Some will argue that it should never be painted…but I think otherwise! The first thing I did was scrub out every detail of this dresser with my husband’s toothbrush and some Krud Kutter. Then I gave it 2 coats of Zinsser BIN synthetic shellac primer. This is my favorite primer!! It has a shellac in the base that blocks out the pink tannins that loves to bleed through mahogany. Let me tell you…since I’ve found this primer, I love my job so much more!

You want to know a secret…My original plan for this piece was to paint it purple and pink ombre. Then I decided no I’m going to paint it blue and coral with hints of yellow………well let me just take a moment here to thank the Mr. for suggesting I stop and walk away from it for the night….you can see for yourself! It wasn’t headed down a positive path…..

Once I collected myself I decided to use boho blue and apothecary from the DIY paint line to do a little color blending over the whole piece. Then I got out my gold leaf and went to town….with 2 golds. BIG MISTAKE. The copper gold looked orange next to the 14k gold and the 14k gold looked yellow. I had a super shiny camo looking mess! Did you know you can sand gold leaf off? You can! So I sanded, painted, and started over yet again.

I decided that I wanted one large swoop of gold rushing over the whole piece. DO you watch the TV show Gold Rush? I’m not a big TV person but my husband loves that show Gold Rush and watches it while I paint sometimes. All I could think of was this dresser is going to have more gold on it than Todd Hoffman found in the last season of Gold Rush! This dresser has a lot going on underneath the paint job. But it’s all about the journey. Great things don’t come easy. What do you think? Would you play with gold leaf?