And so, the quest begins, to make my 8 year old son Brodie's bedroom much more fun than it currently is, and honestly, that won't be hard since it is dull, dull, dull! I am trying to do this on as small a budget as possible, hopefully under $100. Is this stupidly optimistic? I guess we'll find out!
The first project I embarked upon - a Manga chest of drawers! Isn't it COOL!!?
So, here is what I started with. A chest of drawers, which was given to us about a year ago by a friend, and was being used by my son in all of its chipped, white glory.
Some paint from freecycle
and a couple of nice, thick, black and white manga comics from Value Village.
I tackled the handles first. After removing them from the drawers, I sanded and wiped them, then attached them to some cardboard so they would sit nicely without falling over during the painting process.
I cracked open that lovely freecycle paint as fully intended the paintwork on this project to be that nice, dark red. However, this is what happened when I began to paint...
Yes, it was rather pink! I don't think my son will appreciate a pink dresser in his bedroom. Also, it was very translucent - it just wasn't going to work, I think the previous owner has mixed something into it. So, I wiped it off and started again. What did I learn? When I get lovely free paint from freecycle, I may not be getting exactly what it says on the tin! I cracked open a tin of green paint, from the same freecycler, and once I had established it was just good old regular paint, I made a(nother) start!
Once the handles were set aside to dry, we started getting the rest of the parts ready - we removed the drawers, sanded the fronts and put them aside, then started on the main body - I actually attracted a helper for this part! No, this isn't Brodie, it's his older brother. If you look closely in the background, you can see part of another dresser which I previously gave a good old overhaul to!
Once the sanding was finished, we got out some flyers and tape and taped off all the parts that I didn't want to paint - namely, the top and the two side panels, then got going with the green paint again!
It took 3 coats of paint until I was happy with the coverage (no pics of that stage, sorry) - then came the fun part! Brodie and I went through the comics and randomly chose pages we liked. For about a nanosecond I considered trying to have a flowing story, but it never would have worked since every other page would be the face-down part pasted to the wood. So we just went with stuff we liked! I cracked open the mod podge, and started to paste!
The side panels are sort of self-contained/recessed a bit, I did have to trim some little edges to get a good fit. With the top, I made sure to get a nice, straight line at the front, then left the overhang at the back, but made sure to fold it over the edge to get a good fold line - hopefully the next picture will explain it better than I can.
This is the back edge of the dresser where the overhang was. Once the mod podge was dry, I took my sanding block and sanded along the edge, which shears away the excess and gives a lovely, neat line. The white you can see in this pic is the edge of the original white paint on the back on the dresser and dripping down the back a bit - the edge of the paper is really neat, honestly!
Then it was time for the drawers. I again left the pages to overlap on all 4 sides and once it was dried, sanded the edges off.
A top coat of mod podge on the drawers and the main unit (comic book pages only, not paint) to seal it all, and finally 3 thin coats of spray varnish (during the varnish stage, I put some tape over the painted edges that met the comic book pages so they would stay matt and not get all varnishy!) Finally, I reattached the handles, and voila!
Now, I have to be honest - despite much smoothing of the paper during the application stage, there
are still some wrinkles here and there. But I'm not going to let this bother me. I think the finished product turned out pretty awesome.
Chest of Drawers - free
paint - free
comics - $1.99 each so $3.98 in total
flyers - free
Other items I bought for use in this project, and will use for others too as still have some left (so will add them to the running total):
tape - $1
mod podge - $10
varnish - $6
Total cost of Manga Chest of Drawers -
$3.98
Total cost of room to date -
$20.98
Eek - project number one is under my belt, and a fifth of the budget already blown. Not looking good for my $100 budget - I guess I have to go even cheaper on my plans!
You can see more about Brodie's bedroom makeover below:
The Bedroom of Doom! Before the transformation began...
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