When Will and I moved to our house, we didn’t have any big furniture since we lived in NYC apartments and got rid of everything when we moved out. We did however get some nice, quality vintage pieces from Will’s parents, including a nice cherry dresser. Since we wanted to have a green theme in our bedroom and opted for lighter wood tones, we gave it a makeover with some furniture paint and a wax, et voila a modern chic sage dresser was born.

Here’s the before and after of the dresser:

Painting furniture is not hard - all you need to do is remove all the drawers (and doors if possible), and work on them separately from the frame.

Here are the essential steps to making over wooden furniture:

1. Disassemble, and unscrew the knobs

2. Thoroughly clean everything with a either a degreaser or just a really good multi-purpose cleaning and damp towel. Paint is not going to adhere well to dirt and dust!

3. Sand any imperfections; wipe clean again

4. Paint with a high-quality furniture paint - I use and love Jolie Paint, and used their 2022 Color of the Year Sage here. You’ll likely need to apply two coats. For brushes I like to use Zibra brushes.

5. Once paint is dry, finish with a Jolie wax - I used the Clear Finishing Wax with a Jolie wax brush here.

6. Put in the old knobs, or in my case, I bought a set of new marble-patterned knobs that looked more modern, and replaced the old ones.

7. Put back the drawers, and ideally let the whole thing cure for a month (meaning, don’t put anything on it!)

I decorated the top of the dresser pretty simply for now with some home decor books I recently got, a candle, handmade clay links, a diffuser, some eucalypts spray and a picture frame (we didn’t have any photo prints at the time I took the pictures!). As we collect more decorative items, I’ll change up the set-up.

If you have any questions on the painting process, or are wondering where I got certain items from, feel free to throw them in the comments! We’ll be working to furnish our bedroom more in the coming months with some faux plants perhaps, and maybe a little seating area - more to come!