Our Thrifted Dresser Painted with Kilz Paint/Finished with Behr Wax

I go through waves of scoring great Facebook Marketplace items. It’s definitely the safest way to “garage sale shop” during this pandemic.  Thankfully there are still great finds out there.   

This guy was $75.00 and in great shape for being an antique. The missing hardware on the front of the three large drawers was included and undamaged. There were no bad odors to deal with and all the drawers slide in and out easily. Off to a good start:)

The only thing I didn’t care for was the top piece screwed into the back of the dresser. It was a design element neither my husband nor I cared for and it easily unscrewed from the back and left no marks to deal with on the top.

My first step in cleaning this was dusting inside and out then moving onto a mixture of warm water with a large drop of dish detergent and a splash of white vinegar. I also removed the hardware. 

My husband wanted the top of the dresser to have a natural wood finish. Whatever stain previously used was extremely difficult to get off. I used Citristrip and still struggled. After three treatments without a great result I resorted to leaving a fourth treatment on covered in plastic wrap for 24 hours which really helped the process along but didn’t fully remove the almost black under layer. I moved onto straight mineral spirits and stainless steel scouring pads. This removed more residue but still not all of it.

TIP: When I’m stripping a section of furniture, I find it’s easy to protect the rest of the piece using painters tape and plastic. For this job I had some large heavy duty plastic bags in our garage, so I cut down one side to open them up and used two to surround the entire dresser.

After the top dried thoroughly I took my electric sander and 80 grit sand paper to it hoping to move this part along a bit faster. It was getting frustrating. The 80 grit worked great but a considerable amount of residue was still coming off and I went through quite a few sheets before all the passes were clean…

I finished sanding with 100, 120 and lastly 220 grit sand papers. Much more work than I had anticipated but well worth the result.

I waxed the raw wood top of this dresser to seal and protect it with Behr Decorative Wax in Clear Coat Satin. It soaked the wax in like crazy and did darken the wood quite noticeably but as it dried it lightened up a bit as you can see down on the bottom right corner.

After the wax sat and dried for 24 hours, I used a soft lint free cloth and buffed the top. It only took a couple of minutes and the finish I was looking for appeared:)

The wood repairs needed on the legs and corners were minor. Wood putty and light sanding.

Kilz chalk paint is a new product for me and I’m loving it. Two coats covered the dark color of this dresser very well but in certain areas  there was a slight shadow so I went over it with a very thin third coat for extra coverage.

That being said, portions of this dresser ended up with this cracking. I’m not sure why but I wasn’t completely unhappy with it.  I know there can be cracking if you paint your second coat on before the first has dried but this happened with the first coat.  Since I had plans to antique this piece I decided to go with it. I have read to use shellac to correct this if it happens but I have never had to do that.

I applied the first two coats of paint with the brush on the left but I went out and purchased the brush specifically designed for chalk paint for the third. It did reduce the chippy look and I really liked how it covered larger areas quickly.

The above is the third coat completed.

The two waxes I used to seal this project were Behr Decorative wax in Clear Satin and Minwax Finishing Wax in Special Dark. I applied the clear wax first with a project brush in the harder to reach places and a lint free cloth over the rest. That takes twenty four hours to dry. So before that happened I applied the dark wax using the same method over the still wet clear so the dark color would be subtle. I made sure to wipe away any extra.

Are you able to pick up the slight beige color on the top drawers in both pictures? I didn’t want the color of this dresser to be to light and bright being that this dresser is for my husband.

The hardware was badly discolored. I soaked it in white vinegar for 6 days. I then rinsed it under running water and used a toothbrush to scrub any black that the vinegar had loosened. I dried it with a lint free cloth. A lot of black was still coming off onto the cloth.

I used these stripping pads, which are similar to steel wool, and scrubbed the dried hardware with it until it shined. Besides stripping and sanding the top of this piece, this was the most labor intensive part of this project.

It was worth it. I like the hardware on this dresser.

If you look at this picture closely and see texture on the front of the drawers, it isn’t bubbling paint. The drawers were covered with some kind of veneer that I wasn’t about to try to get off. It took the paint well so I left it in place. The texture helped the dark wax give it that slightly aged look  I was going for.

I used contact paper to line the drawers. I love using fabric but I had this paper on hand and it was the same pattern I used to line the drawers in my dresser.

This was a great find. We love it in the bedroom and it fits into the spot perfectly:)

Thank you for stopping by…

Roni