This! This is exactly what I was talking about. Go and behold. And it’s even got the requisite nod to Anthropologie! Ha! I’m a genius. I’m also going to wear black today in mourning for the 110 year-old quarter-sawn old-growth oak.
My favorite line? “… applied a coat of yellow paint and distressed the finish to give it a more aged feel.” Because 110 year-old wood looks “more aged” enrobed in yellow latex that’s been sanded and then covered with contact paper? Holy hell. Norm Abrams is weeping somewhere.
Dandelion Mama 
So true. While we’re at it, let’s coat the pyramids at Giza with Elmer’s glue and then sprinkle calcium carbonate all over, so it looks sort of like an old structure made of limestone.
Whoa. Dig my avatar.
That yellow dresser is NASTAY. How do you know that wood is 110 years old? Did it say somewhere, or can you just tell because you’re smart like that?
I’m guessing. But given the style of the piece, and the deep, substantial tigering of the cross-cut oak, that’s my guess.
Oh, that was some gorgeous grain, couldn’t she have just stained it a nasty yellow instead of painting it?
Actually, it will be way easier to bring it back from horrid yellow latex than it would be to remove a stain. The latex lies on top of the wood, like a thin plastic coating, and only require a stripper and some elbow grease to get off. A stain is way harder to remove, because it’s thin, and sinks into the pore and grain of the wood.
All that piece really needed was a cleaning and maybe a coat of tung oil.
Plus, you’ll have to dig out the spackle or whatever she used to plug the holes left from removing that graceful old hardware.
Ugh.
That yellow – distressed finish or not – looks awful. *shuddering*
The man that has to strip that when his wife finds it at a thrift store after it goes out of style in a year is going to be so mad at her…..
People are doing that to 100-year-old pianos, you know.
A fact which causes me to cry myself to sleep.
Sick. and.wrong. Who makes crap like that? More importantly, who buys crap like that?
I thought the stool was kinda neat, though.
Ben, I totally dig your avatar too!
That’s hideous. I originally thought they’d renewed two different dressers, one wood and one nasty yellow.
All we ever did growing up was strip paint OFF things. So hard to understand.
Holy yuck.
The next question is, am I brave enough to leave a comment saying so on that site?
It won’t make a difference. Her blog is huge, and people fawn over this kind of thing. This type of thing is up over there all the time, and like I said earlier in the week, there are “designers” that fall all over this crap.
What I cannot discern is if they are doing so because they really like it, because it’s different, because it’s modern or because they (unfathomable) really think stuff like this has a shelf date past next year.
Words fail – and that is an accomplishment. 🙂
I kind of like it. But I like bright colors like that. But how do you know that that piece is even completely made of that wood? I have a little dresser that looks like it is oak, but it’s actually just a thin piece of oak over what I think is plywood. When I stripping it to repaint it, I had a couple of people comment on how nice the wood was, until I pointed out the different wood peeking out from the gouges it had acquired in my childhood. But if it IS that wood, I would have never painted it. My husband would have killed me. That’s what Ikea is for.
Please don’t kill me.
Naomi, everyone is entitled- and like I said in the OP, paint away on crap furniture. Knock yourself out. But to paint a genuine antique- (and while plywood existed in the late 1800’s, it didn’t become popular for furniture until the 1920’s. This little dresser was made about 20 years before that. It was also a novelty that was still moderately expensive, and used in things like bentwood rockers, and some cutting edge European furniture design) is just a travesty. You cannot get wood like that anymore. That’s what I’m hollering about.