Family Masterpiece

When we were setting up the nursery for our daughter, my husband and I repurposed a small chest of drawers to be a changing table and dresser. My mother organized it for us the week after our daughter was born and it worked wonderfully for the first year. Unfortunately, once she learned to pull herself up and open drawers our daughter quickly discovered that it was delightful to take every bit of clothing out of the drawers and scatter it over the floor of her room. This was much less delightful for me, and after a few repetitions of this I wised up and we started putting all her clothes in the closet. We put blankets in the chest since those were easier to put away again. As a bonus, they were apparently less fun to take out in the first place and our daughter turned to other sources of entertainment. The chest of drawers got broken in one of the following moves and so it has been closets for us ever since.

Our daughter is four now and recently we decided it was time for a dresser once again. She has been able to open her closet door and pull down her own clothing in the morning for at least the past six months and we haven't had any repetitions of the clothing covered floor phenomenon. Frankly, we have become a little tired of hanging up all her shirts and pants and putting things in drawers seems like it would just be easier. So my husband ventured to IKEA and bought the drawer sets that promised to work in the large white cabinet that stores her sheets and blankets. 

The starting point.

Plain white furniture isn't terribly cheerful for a four year old and my husband bought some colorful drawer fronts from a different product line to liven things up a bit. Unfortunately, the colorful drawer fronts didn't actually work with the cabinet and drawers. I guess there is a reason you are supposed to buy everything from the same grouping. My husband was mourning this fact and the upcoming trip to return the colorful drawers to get boring white ones when I commented "Well, we could paint them any color we want." 

We looked at each other with realization dawning in both of our eyes. "Why yes. Yes we could. We could paint them not just in colors but in pictures." And so a weekend project was born. We schlepped back to IKEA to exchange the colorful fronts for white ones. Then we hit the craft store for acrylic paint and paintbrushes. We covered the kitchen table with a plastic cloth and got to work.

Work In Progress

We each painted one drawer. My husband gamely took on the fourth since my daughter fell asleep and I was worn out with my artistic endeavors.

Work In Progress

After they were dry we took them outside and sprayed them with a glossy sealant, reasoning that we were likely to need to wipe them down from time to time. Also, we felt just a little protective after all our hard work, and from experience we know that acrylic paint will peel.

This afternoon we assembled the drawers, removed a cabinet door, and installed the runners. My husband lifted each drawer into place and my daughter and I filled them with her clothes.

As our daughter would say "It's our masterpiece!"

Our Masterpiece!