Union Jack Dresser

When my first baby was born almost nine years ago, my husband and I had nearly no money.  I wasn’t craigslist or garage sale savvy at the time, and so we bought a little sleigh style dresser at WalMart.  It lasted until the boys were old enough to start using it, and then of course, it just fell apart.  Then I started looking for a dresser.  I wanted it to be solid wood, no press board involved at all.  So I found this beast on craigslist for $50 (a good deal here in Alaska).  It was 100% solid wood, and 100% ugly.  It reminded me of the bunks and furniture we had back  in the 80s.  But, I also knew eventually I could fix it up.

So the dresser remained ugly for a time.  I can’t remember exactly how long.  But I remember, every time I walked by the boys room, the ugliness of the dresser disturbed me.  My mom assured me that the boys didn’t care, which I knew she was right, but I cared.

I set to work on it, back when the only paint I knew of was latex.  I sanded the thing down to bare wood, the buzzing from the electric sander left after shocks in my arms for hours.  I primed it, and then painted it a deep, almost navy blue, and spray painted the handles with Rustoleum’s Oil Rubbed Bronze.

I was happy with the improvement.  I could walk by the boys’ bedroom without a sense of revolting disturbance.  Their room could be messy, but at least, it looked like there was some creative intentionality.

About a year later, I started seeing Union Jack dressers here and there on Pinterest.  And since I have little history lovers, they thought the Union Jack as pertains to history was a pretty cool thing.  I opted to stay in the blues family, so as not to obligate the room tone to be red, white and blue.  We can change the accent color as time goes by.

I used handy-dandy painters tape to accomplish the stripes, and I just painted over the top with paint I had on hand.

The boys LOVED the result.  It was cute, little ones who were indifferent to furniture (like so many males) actually really appreciated the effort and creativity I made to improve their room.  The last layer I used a dry brush technique so as to produce a bit of a vintage look without sanding. (Sanding latex paint isn’t the greatest, it tends to roll and peel rather than sand off.)

This last year I also found a faux-vintage globe.   And the star is actually a vintage engineer’s ruler.  How cool is that?

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