a labor of love

I was sooo excited today about this completed project, and then life got in the way, and I nearly forgot to blog about it!

I must admit -- this is by far my favorite nursery project (even though I was involved in it the least!). I will give you a little background about why ...

In the late 1980s, Matt's father constructed a small dresser that went on to be used in their home and eventually moved on with Matt when he got his first apartment here. That dresser migrated on over to our home after we got married.

After we selected Natalie's nursery furniture, I came up with the great idea (great for me, since I didn't have to do the work, ha!) to strip and stain the dresser to match the cherry wood color of Natalie's stuff. Neither of us were quite sure how it would turn out, and I think Matt gained several new gray hairs throughout the process while I sat back asking him (constantly) when he was going to work on it and/or finish it.

But alas, it is done!

Here is the journey:

 I don't have a good before shot of the dresser because I forgot to take one, but you can see pretty much what it looked like in the picture to the right.

First, he stripped the dresser and drawers with mineral spirits to remove the wax coating.

 

 Then he had to sand everything to give it a smooth finish and ready for staining.

 As with most projects, the daddy-to-be came back into the house wearing the remains of his hard work!

Once the dresser and drawers were smooth, Matt stained them a lovely cherry color.

You may recall a blog post back from August about drawer knobs. Well, I decided to try painting some myself to save some bucks since I couldn't find any I liked at a cheap price. So after looking around at some of the ones I liked on Etsy.com, I came up with the design to the right.















So after this part was completed, they were ready to be attached to the dresser! More work for the daddy-to-be!  And finally, the finished product!! Great job, daddy-to-be!!

So this is why I love this project so much! It turned out better than I had expected, and it makes it so much more special since Natalie's grandpop constructed the dresser, her daddy refinished the dresser, and her mommy hand painted the drawer knobs for it. Furniture made with love!
  
After many corny (and therefore, rejected!) blog title suggestions from Matt, I finally selected the blog title to this post as he suggested.