Refurbished Wallpapered Dresser

We live in a throw-away society. Our trashcans and landfills are overflowing and we are constantly indulging in new things. I'm guilty of this, but I've been trying to become more conscious of my consumption.

As Tim and I began preparing for baby Ariana, we realized we needed a changing table and also a place to store her teeny tiny adorable things. I began searching Pinterest and found some neat changing table/dresser combos. We decided to go in this direction and got a hand-me-down, 80's style dresser from a friend. It was neat because I had this exact same dresser growing up. Here and the before and after pictures:

Our first step was to sand down the entire dresser. The toughest part was sanding in the detailed areas. We didn't do a perfect job, but we got as much of the paint off as possible. We also removed the handles off of the drawers.

  

 The legs and trim of the dresser was made of real wood. So we varnished these parts with two coats of an espresso colored stain. Some of the areas didn't take quite as well as others, probably because of inconsistent sanding. But the finished effect was very vintage and I actually really love it. The parts that were real wood were a type of cheap paneling. The paneling wouldn't take the varnish, so we painted these areas a darker color for a two-toned effect.

Next we wallpapered the drawers. I was looking for some original wallpaper and came upon http://www.spoonflower.com.  It has thousands of unique wallpaper patterns created by a variety of artists. They have anything you could imagine putting on your walls (or dresser) and more. The trickiest part of wallpapering the dresser was lining up the patterns. The roll of wallpaper wasn't wide enough, so I had to do some cutting and aligning. I used a spray adhesive to attach the wallpaper. If I do another project like this I will NOT use the spray adhesive again. It was very messy to work with and didn't seem to stick all that well, either. However I was impatient to finish the project, so I used the spray. Another difficult thing was to smoothly get the paper on without any wrinkles. I did this part of the project by myself, but I would suggest having a partner to help. I think that would have made things go better. Once I got the wallpaper on, I sprayed each of the drawers down with a Modge Podge pearlizing spray. I was really happy I did. It helps to protect the paper and also gave the paper a nice sheen. We then added the new drawer pulls and it was done! Check out the finished product.