Create your own shabby chic white chests of drawers

If you go to a specialist furniture shop looking for shabby chic furniture you can expect to spend a fortune. If you’re on a budget you may be pleased to hear that with a bit of hunting round and some hard work you can easily make your own piece of shabby chic furniture that will be unique to you. Let’s take a look at how you can create you own shabby chic white chest of drawers:

1. By looking around at second hand stores and charity shops you will be able to find some bargain pieces of furniture. You don’t want to buy furniture that is made from chipboard, to get a more authentic look you want a chest of drawers that is made from solid wood – oak chest of drawers are a great starting point. The shabby chic style is ornate looking so try and find something that fits this description.
2. Once you have found the piece of furniture and you have got it home its time for some hard work. Remove any fixtures and fittings that you can, this includes legs if applicable, corner protectors and drawer pulls – keep all of the fixings though for later.
3. Most of the older solid wood furniture that you will find in second hand stores will be lacquered or varnished and you need to remove this. Unless you have a shed or garage I would recommend this part of the process to be carried out outside as it will be dusty. You need to sand down the furniture so that you remove the layer of varnish or lacquer. You will only need to remove the varnish or lacquer that is visible on the outside of drawers – there is no point in removing more because as you will find out it is a lot of hard work! You can use power tools or a good old traditional block of wood and sand paper – if you do decide to use power tools be careful not to get to carried away and create uneven surfaces. This is an important step so make sure that you do a thorough job as the paint will not stick well to shinny glossy surfaces.
4. Once you have removed all of the lacquer give the chest of drawers a rub down with a finer grade of sand/glass paper so that you have a nice smooth surface.
5. Now for the exciting part – painting! White is a great color for shabby chic furniture as it is not too imposing in the room. I would recommend getting an acrylic based paint as it dries in a couple of hours so you can finish the painting stage in one day. You will need to give the chest of drawers a couple of coats so that you cannot see any variation in color.
6. It may be the case that the fixings that came with your drawers were suitable ornate and if this is the case you can move on to the next step. If the fixings you bought were not ornate though you will need to buy some. Take a look at any hardware store and you will be able to find ornate draw pulls and corner protectors. Don’t worry about the color of them as we address this in the next step.
7. Acrylic paint is also suitable for metal fixings, but for fixings that will be used regularly such as the drawer pulls I would recommend spray painting them with some car paint. Car spray paint is much harder wearing and will therefore last a lot longer.
8. Once you have all of your painting done you can reassemble the unit and you’re done you’ve made your self a white chest of drawers that it totally unique to you!