I found this dresser on craigslist for $40. The top was laminate but the rest was wood.
I wood filled the big dents/dings and then lightly sanded the top. I primed it with Glidden Gripper primer followed up with 2 coats of Valspar enamel paint in black satin.
All painted!
I bought 4 new pulls for the bottom drawers but decided it would be cheaper to spray paint the knobs rather than buy new ones. The pulls are satin nickel so I tried out some of the satin nickel spray paint.
I'm pretty happy at how well the spray painted knobs matched the brand new pulls.
Then I moved on to the mod podge part. I used Matte mod podge because that's what I had in my craft cupboard.
First I took a big paper map that I bought for $5 and layed it on the dresser. Then I just creased it where it touched the edges and cut along the crease.
Then I dumped a bunch of mod podge onto the dresser and brushed it around with an old paintbrush. Don't use a paintbrush that you love because you will never get the glue all out.
All covered in mod podge. I just carefully set my cut out map onto the glue. You can move it around a teeny tiny bit buy try to get it close to where you want it because it's hard to move once wet and will rip pretty easy.
Then I dumped another big glob of mod podge on top of the map and smeared it around. I wanted it to be a little bumpy and not totally smooth. Which was good because I think it would be impossible to make it smooth. I wanted some texture.
Close up of the wet map. The little bumps went away after it dried but i did try to smooth most of them out.
All dried. I went over with some navy blue craft paint on a wet rag to really make the textured areas come out.
Love! After the mod podge dried a few days I put two coats of polycrylic on it to make it more durable. Sometimes mod podge is sticky even after it is dry and the polycrylic will get rid of the stickiness.
So excited with how it turned out. I think the total cost was about $55 including the actual dresser, pulls, map and spray paint. The primer and black paint was leftover from other projects.
