A very lonnnngggggg Easter weekend alone, so what did I choose to do?....... (Ugggggh) :-/

We've had this HUGE pine welsh-dresser for about 16yrs and it's seen some life and scrapes and scuffs, I never really liked it in the honey varnish colour though and never knew how I wanted it to look; UNTIL a week before Easter this yr (2013), I had a vision of it in my new dining room which didnt fit with the wall colour (previously Eau De Nil) either so I started by repainting those!  Then drove off to Farrow & Ball in Hampstead with samples of the curtain fabric, wall paint, flooring, tablecloth and much more, the poor shop assistant looked a little surprised as I kept pulling out yet more things from my home in an oversized carrier bag which I kept referring to as 'my mood board'!  LOL.  

I couldn't find a photo of how the dresser once looked other than this old pic of when my son was a toddler playing beside it, but it shows the transition of how the wood has changed.  

After looking at many samples of theirs on wooden planks and not being able to tell the difference between all the whites, greys, beiges, etc.... despite her keen efforts to educate me into the Farrow way of thinking; I fell head over heels in love with one and it looked JUST RIGHT.  So here are pics of my work and finished piece.  12 whole days and nights of endless sanding, cleaning, sanding again, priming twice, fine sanding again, cleaning and finally painting 2 final coats of actual colour - is my finished welsh dresser in Farrow&Ball Joa's White and my new dining room walls of Laura Ashley's Camomile and curtain fabric in Laura Ashley's 'Awning Stripe' again in Camomile.  

The sanding was majorly hard as had to be done mostly by hand due to the grooves and curves etc, my hands actually turned into sandpaper by the end of it and my finger tips became velcro!  ;-/ 

 The whole dresser weighs a tonne!  we unscrewed the top part and lifted it down into the old living room where I worked on it.  It's taken all our strength to get it lifted back up and back in situ in that alcove.  



  

Curious for a solution on how to get the drawer and door knobs sanded without removing my entire fingers! plus painted I stumbled across a bag of carrots in the bottom of the fridge past their best, perfect solution! tadaaah, sliced them so that sat on the bench and pushed each knob into one for me to work on.

The undercoat and primer was a surprisingly nice colour almost gey/green, for a while I was kind of keen to leave it like that!  

And here it is, back in its alcove where it will stay for eternity!  All I have to do now is tidy up and dress it.... 

Oh, also got final bits of masking tape and paint to remove from glass doors!  :-(