I love talking to customers about Miss Mustard Seed’s Milk Paint! Among the many descriptive qualities I use to describe the paint is, “you can paint a dresser with Milk Paint and by the time you are finished, it looks like it has been sitting in Grandma’s attic for a few decades, chipping and wearing with primitive deliciousness!”

Perhaps I need to change my analogy because while we were salvaging the grand farmhouse in our epic #knottooshabbyfarmhouserescue, we came across an attic dresser…one in such disrepair that we disregarded it during our first visit completely, and it wasn’t until the third go around through the house that we decided to muscle it down three flights of stairs.

This attic dresser had anything but primitive deliciousness.

The first bit of business was to tackle the veneer on top. I removed all of the veneer by placing a wet towel on the top and heating it in sections with a hot iron. The water loosens the wood  and the heat dissolves the glue so that it can be roughly peeled back with a putty knife. It’s a bit of work, but on a small surface like this one, it didn’t take more than about 30 minutes to remove.

The entire base and drawers were painted with a coat of French Linen Chalk Paint.®

For the tall flat surface on the drawers, I created an oversize print of a fabulous vintage music graphic that appeared on the cover page of a book of vintage sheet music from the 1940’s; roughly the same era s the dresser it was going on.

Once the top was sanded smooth, I added a coat of Curio to stain it and then applied straight Dark Wax as a protective finish.

The end result…

Quite the transformation, cosmetically tailored with all the original qwerkiness of a dresser of its age that was stored in a dusty attic for decades!

Here’s to endless salvaging!