The Pintester Movement Challenge - Ombre dresser

If you are not reading the blog Pinterster, you need to get over there after you read this post and check it out! I'm serious. This girl is something else. She created her blog testing pins from Pinterest and I would consider her success rate less than impressive - but she completely owns that and has made a job of attempting pins and documenting her final product. I would consider her effort super impressive considering she's done far more pins than most of us with a Pinterest account. She threw down the gauntlet and challenged her readers to get to moving and actually do something they'd actually pinned.

Challenge accepted.

Here you can see my board called "everything gets painted" - and here is what I have been dying to do every since I pinned it:

Source

Well, it just so happens that a friend of mine, Summer, was having a little girl and had a dresser that they wanted painted. I told her I would do it if I could do suggested ombre in pinks. She was on board - her husband would take some convincing considering it was a piece from his family and rather old. But, his wife was pregnant and that's what she wanted, so that is what we did.

Here's what I started out with:

Luckily, I didn't have to sand this piece. 

But I did use my Norwex dusting mitt to remove
all the dust prior to priming. 

Then I taped everything off (which I feel is important if you're going to be doing any type of painting - nothing ruins a good paint job like splatters and drips):

This was probably the trickiest part....

Then I got to working:

Oooo pretty pretty

Yes, I did spill some pink paint in the process.
Make sure you close the container before shaking. 

I primed everything white to begin with. I used spray primer from Sherwin Williams but I should have used a roller for the primer. This was a really old dresser that had recently been sanded down so the spray did not give me the finish I was hoping for. I used a foam roller for the entire dresser after that. The white took me a few more coats than I would have liked, but sometimes that happens. The finish of a paint job is determined by the prep work and because my prep wasn't exactly as I would have liked, it took me a few tries to get the finished product to get to my standards.

I gave it a few coats of water-based poly to protect it from what is sure to be years of use and ended with a little something like this:

All ready for baby!

I used sample paints from Sherwin Williams - they sells quart samples for around $6, which is a great deal considering you only get a few ounces at other stores for around the same price.

Now, if I can just get to moving on the other 112 pins I have on the "projects to complete" board and 61 pins on the "projects for friends" board...