you may or may not already know this about me, but for about a year and a half i worked for a local artist by the name of beth philips doing furniture refinishing. if you happen to find yourself in cornelius, nc at any point in your life you can see her work at an adorable little shop called bebe gallinis.

while i no longer refinish pieces as a profession, i certainly still put that skill to use to decorate my own home. here is a recent purchase that had a bit of new life breathed into it...

evan and i were in need of some new dressers because the ones we had moved with us down from brooklyn and didn't quite survive the trip.

we found this fabulous little solid oak piece for 20 bucks at the very salvage spot i spoke of in my last post. it wasn't looking so good when we found it, but i saw the potential that was hiding under there!

i used a belt sander to get off the many layers of paint and stain that were bringing this baby down!

then used a dark grey primer to coat the whole piece, and chose a rich mustard yellow as the final color...

i sanded the whole thing again and roughed it up quite a bit to give it more of a shabby appearance. the color still felt a bit too vibrant for me at that point, so i rubbed a deep oak stain across the whole thing.

i'm quite pleased with the end result...

...and apparently so is our little juan!

i just scooped up another dresser this past weekend which will hold every bit of our goodies. this one shown here isn't really big enough for much more then some unmentionables :) i'll be sure to share some before and afters of our new piece if it ever stops raining long enough for me to get out and paint it!