Left On HIGHLAND: Anna's Bedroom Furniture...

You've all seen it. Multiple times. You may have had these same pieces when you were a little girl. I follow a ton of blogs and it seems like there is always somebody blogging about their version of how to update this furniture. My post on how to update this furniture is very simple: Pay someone else to do it.

But first I did this:

I let it air out in my garage for several months. It was a little stanky. It had contact paper inside every single drawer. It was ooooollllldddddd and stubborn. Must have been German contact paper. (Just kidding, Grammy.) I searched the internet for the best ways. I tried and tried to peel that stuff out. I scraped. I soaked it. I tried to heat it with an old blow dryer. I didn't want to use any chemicals. Defeated, I cursed the existence of contact paper and was certain that the devil himself created it to make me crazy. I walked away from that contact paper like a big girl and I didn't look back for a few more months. As progress was made on Anna's room, I decided it was time to have the furniture painted. One amazingly hot, dry day during the drought of 2012, I put all of those drawers out in the sun in my driveway. I was going to get that contact paper out AND keep my cool while I was doing it. I lined the rest of the pieces up along our path and went back inside to get a bucket of soapy water and some rags and towels. Then, what happened next still amazes me to this day. I walked up to the drawers, I took a deep breath, and gently tugged at a loose corner of the contact paper. IT CAME UP IN ONE DANG PIECE, MY FRIENDS. ONE WHOLE PIECE. My kiddos saw this and joined in the fun. I felt joy! Elation! It was fantastic! Everyone peeled up entire pieces of contact paper and those drawers were German (just teasing, Grammy) contact paper free in a matter of minutes! As it turns out, the heat of the sun and probably the warmth of the concrete they were sitting on, warmed that stuff up. No scraping, chemicals, soapy water, or blow dryers. I love sunshine. By the way, that was a tutorial just in case you hadn't noticed.

After the contact paper came up, I soaped up the inside and outside of that furniture and rinsed it well. It was so clean. I left it all sit in the sun and dry out. We loaded it up into my car after dinner that night and I took it to The Lost Finish the following morning.