I like...

A Rast chest of drawers, £20 from Ikea.

Then...

Now.

I'm ridiculously pleased with how this chest of drawers has turned out. I did like the original plain pine but I'd treated it with Danish oil which made it take on rather yellowish tone and, well, it was just a bit ordinary.

A little bit of staging has taken place, this is how it really looks normally, piled high with stuff, including...

...the patchwork which I have been working away on when I have a spare moment, but which is growing very slowly.

A reverse view.

Back to the drawers - there was an in-between stage...

I tried the Annie Sloan painted white look, too plain...

I dug out an old stencil from the 1990's...

Hmmm, not keen. I hoped the wax would tone it down, but it remained bright and garish (though the children liked it) and I never even bothered to take a photo of it once fully completed. It irritated me slightly whenever I walked in the room. What to do... I'd seen photos on-line and in magazines where people had used wallpaper to decorate drawers so when N and I went to B&Q earlier this week to buy a towel rail we took a wander though the wallpaper section and came home with a few samples.

To apply the wallpaper I removed the drawers and handles and liberally coated the front of the drawers with some of the children's craft (PVA) glue (too liberally in the case of the last drawer, I had to squeegee out lots of excess glue).

Of the wallpaper samples I'd taken home I liked the blue one with birds best, and the sample was big enough to cover all three drawers with the birds still being in sensible positions. It wasn't wide enough to cover the whole drawer front so I used strips from a second wallpaper sample to put down the sides. Once it was dry I replaced the handles and that was it. All free, except the glue, which we already had and which was from a pound shop.

Now when I walk in the room I am happy.

(Except that the table is now covered with the stuff pile, off to find a home for it all, somewhere...)