Repurposed old chest of drawers into toy storage with Rust-Oleum

Few weeks ago I have started my new upcycling project (the first one you can find here) in collaboration with Rust-Oleum. 

This time I was repurpusing our old mdf chest of drawers which was taking up the space in the corner. As its a dark effect laminate mdf I thought that it might be a little bit problematic to paint but decided to give it a go first to see if I'm right. Prior to painting I have took all drawers out and put newspaper underneath the chest of drawers to avoid any marks on the carpet. Once I started using gloss paint I did notice that it didn't "settle" on the mdf and seemed very runny and watery. 

Rust-Oleum spray primer saved the day and made a brilliant base for the main painting job. To use the primer you need to thoroughly shake the can, direct it towards the area you want to spray (make sure you do it from a distance and maybe with a face mask on) spray back and forth or up and down.

Tip: To avoid runny effect from primer try to hold the spray with a bit of a distance and do not stop on my point, you have to move your hand whilst spray and only stop moving primer away from the object.

Once spray painting was done I have left it to stand for few minutes (primer dries literally in seconds) and then proceeded to paint with chalky finish paint in white and hessian. I wasn't quite sure how hessian will turn out to be on chest of drawers hence decided to experiment and see how it behaves on top of the white paint and without. The difference in colour wasn't too drastic but it seemed it looked much better and just the way I imagined in my head.

For painting I have used paint brush at first and then for corners only but eventually opted for mini paint roller for the rest of the chest of drawers as works much faster. 

As it was my first time using chalk paint I have tested it on the areas I have spray painted and the areas I didn't, it is less runny on the areas free from primer and applies smoothly on the areas which were spray painted before. You can see the difference between chalk and gloss paint straightaway, chalk paint is more matty and settles quickly on the surface where as gloss paint may need to be re-applied. 

Whilst the paint was drying I had to do some manly jobs to make our chest of drawers more of a shelving unit. For that I needed a little hammer, nails, runners taken our of drawers. 

Taking runners of drawers may seem as a very difficult job but with the help from my mini hammer it was done withing seconds (to take runners from the drawers I had to slightly rip sides apart trying to release the runner), the most difficult job was to saw long shelf I had from a different unit to the size of L's new toy storage unit.

When I had 2 large runners detached from it's drawers I have nailed them down ( I used 6 nails and hammer) to the bottom of the unit creating a space at the bottom, by doing that it means that any item left in the chest of drawers if lifted will remain  on a "shelf" rather than being on a floor as without it chest of drawers has hollow bottom. 

Once the bottom of the unit was secured with nails and shelf was "cut" to fit chest of drawers I have screwed back (to the left and right side of the unit with 2 screws for each side) 2 large plastic inserts which in previous life were holding drawer in its place. By doing so I have created a new space for the shelf to go in and make it a complete storage unit. 

                                    

And here it is my daughter's new storage unit, which she likes a lot, by the way!

I won't lie I had to go through numerous pictures to find something similar to what I wanted but the result is slightly different to what I have achieved but nonetheless a very exciting and sturdy project!

As I have finished the project it seems very easy to do and write it all up as I have done it in few attempts and knew what I wanted or were doing it on a spot, but if you do have any question please do get in touch!

Disclaimer: I was provided with Rust-Oleum products for the purpose of these updates. All opinions are honest and my own.