Bathroom Dresser

This thing has been sitting in my bedroom closet since we moved to Texas. Before that, it sat in my downstairs guest room in Germany and I just begged people who came to visit to ignore it. I bought it for $5 at a junk sale on base, and just about got my money's worth. The dresser is made of laminate, which was chipping up and separating at the top corners and bottom front. The bottom drawer wouldn't close because there was something lodged behind it, and the whole thing just looked beat up and ugly. Oh, and it was missing a drawer pull, not that it was any great loss, the remaining pulls being made of plastic and painted very poorly.

So my superman husband wiggled it and shook it and turned it upside down and rightside up until the plastic doohicky that was preventing the bottom drawer from closing magically appeared in the top drawer! Ta da! I took off the ugly drawer pulls and pondered what to do next.

I knew I didn't want it to be white anymore - especially not that shade of white - and I didn't really know how to paint laminate. Laminate, if you don't know, is a thin layer of plastic over particle board or compressed wood. You can't just paint it willy-nilly because the paint won't stick to the plastic, and you can't strip-n-stain because the wood underneath is no good. Most furniture you buy today, from IKEA to Target to Pottery Barn (isn't that sad?) is laminate. It's kind of the poor man's veneer.

Well, I firmly believe several things. One, never pass up an opportunity to use the restroom. Two, anyone can learn to do anything, just maybe not well. And three, anything worth finding can be found by Google. So I taught myself to paint laminate furniture.

First, you clean it. I'm talking Clorox bleach-based household cleaner. You want to cut through any dirt or grease or whatever else might be sticking to the outside of that plastic layer. This saves you a lot of time on your next step which is:

Sanding! Sand that sucker until it looks dull and little flecks of plastic are everywhere. DON'T SAND THROUGH THE LAMINATE. Underneath the laminate is this (usually) dark brown pressed composite wood, and it just drinks up paint and turns darker than everything else. You still want that plastic layer, but you want to rough it up so that the paint has something to stick to. Since there is no wood grain, I sanded first in one direction, then parallel to that. I wanted a really good fine textured surface before I painted, because I decided to skip step three:

Prime! I really, really suggest using a primer. If I were doing this again, I'd go back and prime it first. But I didn't. Because I crave instant gratification and primer takes too long. But something like Zinsser Bullseye 123 Latex Primer would have been a great choice for this piece. I know it says no sanding needed, but trust me, as in any wood project, the sanding is key. Now it's time for the best part:

Paint! I'm not going to lie to you, I learned a lot on this piece. I learned that sanding sucks. I learned that primer is your friend. I learned that all drawers on every piece of furniture I ever build are going to be removable, because these weren't and painting it sucked. But most of all, I
learned that spray paint, no matter how good an idea it seems, is not the best choice for anything bigger than a breadbox. The wind was blowing like crazy and carried away half of my can of spray paint into the air. It took forever and came out blotchy because I had to spray it 4 inches away from the surface to get any paint onto the cabinet, otherwise the wind just blew it away. The drawers weren't removable, so I had one heck of a time getting them painted and still wasn't completely successful. Every now and then I sit down on the toilet and see a spot that I missed. Anyway, you're not done yet! Now it's time for your final step:

Cure! That's right. Let that sucker cure. Anytime you paint wood, it needs a few days past the drying time to cure. Curing lets the paint harden and fully dry, and you'll only skip this step once in your life, ruining a perfect paint job, and then you'll never do it again. I finished this project a week ago and today I'm going to put the pedestal bowl and marble fruit (yes, I know how tacky that sounds) on top of the cabinet for the first time. This is also when you add your gorgeous drawer pulls that you got from Hobby Lobby for $10/5 after you bought $30 worth of knobs at Target that you didn't like as much anyway.

I think I covered everything about painting laminate, at least in my experience so far. It isn't hard, it's just time consuming because you have to be so careful with the sanding so that you don't go through the laminate. Power sander = no bueno. Do it all by hand. Trust me.