Finally Finished (Sort Of)

It feels GREAT to say this: I am finally done with the jewelry drawer! Well it is not exactly finished – it needs two more additions but it is DONE enough for me to fill it with earrings galore.

First – the cheap before. I didn’t take a before photo but here’s a picture of the FIRA drawer. (Link doesn’t work anymore, IKEA doesn’t sell this anymore, frown) It cost me 15 bucks each and I bought three of them.

I assembled them and then painted them with white latex primer. Nick still says that I should have painted them first AND then assembled them. Only recently have I told him that I think that he’s right about this. He hasn’t stopped saying “I told you so” with one raised eyebrow thus far. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Then: paint. Black. Thick, gloopy coats of paint.

Not Working Very Well. Splatters all over and the paint just didn’t look good. I got glossy paint because I thought I wanted it to be glossy and cute and jewelry-like but it just showed ALL the flaws and our novice painting skills.

After looking at them scattered all over our dining room floor for a week and then hiding them in our bedroom for a few more weeks and feeling like a loser as I failed to meet my goal for the Procrasinator’s Party, I decided to just START ALL OVER AGAIN.

We bought a sander, primer paint spray, black paint spray, and a large scoop of determination.

All sanded-up and ready for a coat of primer and two coats of black (NON-GLOSSY!) paint spray…

I tried paint spraying them in our backyard but it’s too windy here and the cardboard kept on flying away, so I tried holding them down with huge glass wine jars (I like the cheap sangria from Wal-Mart, it is delicious, trust me) but the bees came and chased me, laughing. So I had to do all the painting in the garage, with the door open, of course. But I have to admit that sometimes I did feel a little sick and had to come inside to breathe.

The steps after all that sanding and painting were easy. Nick glued it down with Gorilla Glue and clamped the drawers together.

But the gorilla glue expanded and it spilled out the sides. Not a problem – I scrapped them down with a razor.

Did some more spray touch-ups and added knobs from Anthropologie and I love it!

Yeah, I need to buy six more knobs. Will, will.

As you can see, there are already weird notches in the drawers and I didn’t want them to be like that so I just added the knobs and bought large washers so it would fit and just put the nut that came with the knobs to tighten it. If that was gibberish to you (not sure how to explain it to you), I’m sure the next few pictures will clarify.

Got some cute metal tins from a local store in Austin and glued down some black felt on the drawers so everything wouldn’t slide around.

Maybe now I’ll stop asking Nick to look for my glasses after I’ve taken off my contact lenses!

I want to add a bottom stand to the drawer. I will go on a hunt soon… I want a stand similar to the tulip table, but we’ll see what we can find…

And of course – I cannot take any credit for this idea. When I saw this, it was instant love.