{AFTER}
Who says that dressers can only be for bedrooms? Today I refreshed a little activity space in my living room. And it inspired inspiration!
{BEFORE}
Once upon a time I came by three old and beautiful trunks. The first one was acquired when I was driving through my neighborhood and drove past an old, slightly broken, but otherwise quaint little trunk lying curbside. I immediately reversed and jumped out to inspect it. I rang the owner's doorbell and asked if I could take it if she was throwing it away. She happily gave it to me, glad that it had a new owner.
The second one I found on a Facebook yard sale site. You might say that this was the first one's twin since the seller ended up being the sister to the first trunk owner (small world). $5 for cutie number two.
I proudly kept the two trunks in my front room as decoration and storage. One day my husband's friend visited and noticed them and offered to give me his old one as well. Double win!! So eventually I had a $5 trunk/hodgepodge furniture piece in my house. There it sat for three years and held all of my boy's collection of baby/toddler toys. Whenever he was in the mood for those toys I would disassemble my furniture piece and open one of the trunks so he could have at it.
It worked wonderfully well, despite being slightly painful and awkward to disassemble, until recently when the time finally came for a change. I recently came by an old and beautiful white dresser (how lucky am I?). I never turn down old dressers. After racking my brain for a use for this dresser, since we already have one for each person in our household, I though of this.
I don't have a before picture but I will just say that I gave the dresser a nice wipe down with bleach and even sprayed some bleach on the drawers and let them bake in the sun for a couple of hours. After carefully inspecting the dresser for hitchhikers I brought it in the house and replaced it with the trunks (they were relegated to the bedroom to hold treasured baby blankets and adult board games for now).
I then decided to line the insides of the drawers. One of the odd things that I love to collect is unique rolls of wrapping paper. This pattern was especially cute. I measured the drawers width and length, quickly cut out enough paper to double that (for a thicker more substantial piece) and rolled tape into thirds to make double-sided tape to hold it in place.
That's it! I've tried gluing wrapping paper down to line old dressers before in the past and I think I prefer this method. The paper generally doesn't come back up and you can easily switch it out if needed.
Perfectly holds all of child number two's toys.
Plus a sticker/craft drawer for the three-year-old.
This was a simple yet refreshing update to our living room. I never get tired of white furniture in any room. It goes awesome against our wall of old maps that me and my three-year-old are collecting to learn about geography and location. Not only only that but maps help to remind that there is still a big, wide world out there to be discovered...
PS. The dollar store sells a map of the US! Go get one!!