Silver bedside table

I have a been living with a set of dressers since college that I have been wanting to get rid of.  I haven't ever liked them.  But they were free.  And solid wood.  They are also in terrible shape.  And verrrry heavy.  And not my style.  Every time we move I say that I'm going to get rid of them.  Then I realize that will mean picking out and spending money on new dressers.  And then I give up and keep them.  I've decided that instead of getting rid of them, I am going to have some fun.

I started with the single bedside table.  If there was ever a second one, it was lost in the basement of my mother-in-law's house long before we dragged these pieces into the sunlight.  I don't have a before picture of the side table but here is the tall dresser from the set:

It really is that orange.  Bits of trim missing.  Water stains.  Mismatched pulls.  Chew marks.  Sticky hazy veneer.  Cracked veneer.  Peeling veneer.  Smells like veneer. 

I decided to paint and let my daughter choose the color.  She needed a little cabinet next to the piano to keep her music in.  Her color of choice was silver.  I found a non-sparkly silver in the Martha Stewart line called Polished Silver.  I suppose I could have gone the spray paint route but I've never found a silver spray paint that wasn't laced with faux sparkles and glitter.  

I told myself that if my 11 year old was helping I was going to take a more relaxed approach.  I did sand the top because it was really rough.  I filled in a few obvious scratches and gouges with wood filler - and now that it is finished I see many more and I think "Man, I really should have done a better job at filling in and sanding!"  Live and learn.

I added an entirely new piece of trim to the left side on the front of the door.  *That sounds confusing:  it's the vertical piece near the door knob.  I was quite happy with how that turned out.  I cut a slice off a 1/4 piece of luan we had around.  It was perfect.  I glued it in, sanded it down and rounded the edges.

Then we took it into the yard and primed it inside (not the drawer) and out with Rustoleum Ultra Cover Primer.  I used a bit of cream colored paint I already had to brighten up the inside of the cabinet.  Finally finally  (11-year-olds are quite impatient) it was time for the silver paint.  My 11-year-old also doesn't mind having paint all over her hands while she is holding the paint brush.  Ugh!  So we painted and painted and painted.  This paint is very thin and it seemed to take a dozen coats.  *In reality it was about 4.  I also didn't take any pictures of the process, so thanks for playing along.

 My daughter picked the knobs.  She really wanted to use these from Anthropologie.  It bothered me a bit that one is silver and one is brass but she wanted something that made it look more funky not fancy.  She didn't want fancy but she picked silver paint.  That is how an 11-year-old thinks.