Most people like having things that are original without having to spend a lot of money. But generally these to things are a bit of an oxymoron. You just can’t. Either you go a carpenter and they make exactly what you want, which will cost a pretty penny. Or you buy it from a store and you don’t get to have your furniture be unique. But that’s not completely true.
Being a young couple and having spent a lot on our home renovations, sadly there wasn’t a lot of money left over to buy furniture, and I had furniture that I liked from old place but it didn’t really fit with the style of my space. So being a designer and knowing where to go I went looking to make things special and my own. We had recently acquired a some new closets from family. And to be totally honest, there were a little bit bland. It was white armoire, with what I considered plain and kinda out of date white handles. Our apartment has more of a modern style, so I wanted to spice it up a bit.
I happen to love white armoires, wardrobes, and dressers, as I find they are totally flexible with any colour scheme you choose to use. And white furniture is a bit timeless . In general I love choosing furniture that mostly neutral in colour and than getting one or two accent pieces to spice up colour. Without it being too much colour.
But back to my white armoire, this piece was going to be in the entrance way. So I decided to do something simple, change the door handles. I went to a hardware store that basically only sells door handles and all the fittings and hardware that one would need. At first I was a little overwhelmed by all the choices. I than started to think about what I wanted, since I have more of a modern home, I wanted to stick with more modern handles. Even with that the choice was endless, especially since the handle size I needed was a pretty standard size, good thing I didn’t bring my husband as he wouldn’t have known what to do with all the choices. You can spend anywhere from 5-350 shekel per handle, the spectrum is just so great. (Designer tip, whenever you are looking at getting new handles, take one of the current ones with you so to know exactly what size you need.) Since I needed a lot of handles for this piece, 10 to be exact, I didn’t want to spend a lot of money, so I choose something simple but modern and it really added something to the piece
We also got a white armoire for my daughters room, this wardrobes and been part of a much larger set that was taken apart,so besides for wanting to change the handles, I also had to figure out what to do with one of the unfinished sides. I proceeded to return to my now favorite hardware store, but this time finding handles that matched was going to be a tad trickier, I wanted handles that were kid friendly. There were lots of choices but since we had painted my daughters room a turquoise colour,none of the kid friendly handles came in anything that would have matched. So at first I was a bit stumped I didn’t want to give up and go with something standard and plain, I wanted something different than I noticed these plain wood handles that they could be painted. Since I still had left over paint from my daughters room, so I figured perfect, I’ll get these and paint them. However there was still the issue what to do with the side of the wardrobe. I came up with a few ideas, and finally settled on painting the side of the closets and adding art decals. I was debating on what what colour to do for the side. Should I go with white and match the cabinet or should I do something different, something more fun and youthful, finally I settled on the idea of painting the side the same colours as the walls. After it was all painted, my daughter and I put on Frozen art decals. She was very excited. I took an old wardrobe and turned it into something new and fun.
I love to shop at Ikea (which might be sacrileges to say as a designer) , and I bought for my daughters room a nice white simple drawers. But they were just white, and I wanted something to make it more bright and child friendly. So I went looking and I found these beautiful and bright wall decals. I put them on my daughters dresser and now instead of plan white, it’s pretty and girly, and fun. Which is what I want in a kids room, and what’s easy about wall decals is as they grow up you can peel them off and change them to something more mature.
Final product
If this type of dresser is for an older child or even for yourself, you might not wanna do wall decals, so you can get contact paper or wall paper and cover the drawers and even the sides if you want. Don’t let things from box stores stay that way, make them your own. Things can be made into unique ideas without having to spend a lot of money.
