Years ago, a hot new interior decor trend took the market by storm. Chalk paint seemed to be a cure all for all of our drab, outdated furniture pieces and made even the most inexperienced home DIYer feel like they were worthy of their own HGTV show.
I have to admit that I was one of those people and when I initially picked up this beautiful vintage piece from Goodwill for $70. I decided the best way to fix it up, get rid of the smoky odor and cover up the slight blemishes without completely sanding down and refinishing was, you betcha: chalk paint.
Also like a lot of people, I realized soon after that I strongly disliked the finish but the thought of stripping, sanding and refinishing the piece was too daunting for me to do anything about. Until today when I had a random burst of energy and ended up finishing half the project in less than an hour. That wasn’t so hard, was it??
This brings me to my next point and what I really brought you here to talk about, do you know what else I was guilty of not knowing much about and largely ignoring because I thought it was way too hard for me to do anything about?
Systemic racism.
If you’re like me, you may have not been aware just how bad racism has been in America for our entire lives. Slavery ended, people marched on Washington for civil rights, MLK is a household name. But there has been a lot of media fanfare around ending racism without a whole lot of actual action and black and brown people still suffer each and every day.
I thought for the longest time in my life that just being “not racist” was enough. But in the fight for equality, you’re either for or against, there is no neutral party.
Essentially, if you take WWII & the Holocaust as a similar metaphor, you couldn’t just “not be a nazi” or “not like Hitler” if you were living in Germany or any of the surrounding countries that the nazis had invaded and held power over. if you weren’t actively resisting the nazis, you were complicit with the atrocities that were committed, plain and simple.
Thus, when we talk about modern day racism, police brutality and straight up murder of black and brown people by the hands of the police, complacency is just about as guilty as being on the side of the oppressor. You may have heard the term “white silence=violence” and that’s because when non-black people stand by and watch things happen but say “that’s not my fight” or “oh how awful” but don’t decry it publicly or take action against it, it is this “neutrality” that is actually a form of racism in and of itself.
Now, if you are reading this, you can no longer feign ignorance to the plight of black and brown people in America. You can no longer stand idly by while people are dying and suffering at the hands of people put in charge of a system that was formed out of racist leaders and policymakers and continues to be managed by them.
Here are some great resources for you to read to find out more about what people are doing in response to the recent murder of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery and the countless black lives lost at the hands of police:
How to be an ally to the BLM movement
White Activists Can Change Culture
If you’re afraid of Covid-19, or you can’t march or physically make a change, here is an extensive list of places you can donate. I know you got a stimulus check and you’ve been ordering things on Amazon that you don’t really need so what better way to help the cause by setting up a recurring monthly donation or even a one time donation. Even $5 helps, so if you can buy things on Amazon that make Jeff Bezos become an actual trillionaire, you can divert. those funds to people who actually deserve it.
115 Ways to donate & support people of color
Lastly, money TALKS. Marching and conversations with your sphere of influence as well as your government representatives and policymakers is priceless. However, we all know that in our capitalist society it’s that paper that does the most. I’ll be posting about some amazing black owned businesses with CUTE AF stuff in the near future so look out for that!
Now that you’re done signing petitions, making donations, marching and having those tough conversations, I’ll give you a little breakdown of what I did for this piece!
Literally picked up a can of paint stripper at Lowes (which btw. has a black CEO and is 1000x better than Home Depot so shop accordingly!). I grabbed a brush I use for paint that I already had and poured a little bit directly onto the drawers. This stuff is THICK. With the consistency of shampoo so I didn’t worry about spills. Either way I took these outside and did them on the concrete slab. I highly recommend putting a plastic tarp down and having a plastic bag or disposable cup to toss the scrapings into afterwards.
The can says to wait 15 minutes after applying the stripper but literally as I was painting with the brush it started to come up. So after just a few minutes i took my scraper and began scraping off the paint along the wood grain. It’s very important to go along the grain and not against so you don’t scratch the piece or chip it.
After I removed it all I wiped off the excess with a damp, soapy cloth. Now if you remember, the pieces still smelled smoky from previous owners and the smell definitely started to come back with the wood exposed. So I sanded them all down, wiped with a damp cloth and then used my UV light for 30 minutes (locked in the bathroom with no houseplants or living creatures around).
Afterwards I took my magical furniture polish/restorer and just wiped those babies down until they were deep and shiny. A lot of times the pieces I pick up look old and sad because they need some love. It’s amazing what you can do with a quick cleaning and a little moisture for some vintage wood pieces!
I also found the very same dresser being sold online for $1500 which is one of my favorite bits of information when researching a piece I thrifted!
I realize I still have to do the the legs of the piece but that will be another day. I also took this opportunity to go through the drawers and organize/throw out anything that I didn’t need.