Painting the dresser

I've finally gotten around to painting the Craigslist mid-century Drexel Touraine dresser for the dining room. It looked like this before:


I primed it with Zinsser Cover-Stain oil based primer and then tried out Sherwin Williams ProClassic Waterbased Acrylic-Alkyd Enamel. It's one of the new "hybrid" paints that acts like oil, but is actually water based. The paint store assured me it has great leveling properties so brush strokes will disappear, but that didn't prove to be the case for me. The surface looks quite brush-strokey despite my efforts to lay it down quickly and not over-brush it. It's driving me crazy, but maybe I'll forget about it once the dresser is in place in the dining room. I tried researching online whether I could add Floetrol to a water based alkyd to help it level and gave up in confusion— and, let's be honest— laziness.

I'm moving on.

I want to spray paint the hardware.


Should I make it look brassy? Pretend this statue lady's arm is a drawer handle.


Or let's get crazy: Hot pink.


Here's a hasty Photoshop mock-up with brass.


Here's a hasty Photoshop mock-up with pink. Heck, let's paint the fancy trim around the bottom, too.


But remember, it's going to live in this room with nutty fuchsia wallpaper. A vintage lamp with a sleek brass cylinder base will sit on top.

My gut tells me it would be pink overkill. After all, a respected colleague once informed me that restraint is the second rule of design. But man, that pink is FUN. Maybe in a room that wasn't already swathed in pink.

I was going to use the original hardware, but the mocked-up rectangles are making me want something simple, modern, and less fussy. I wonder if I could find something like that.

What to do, guys?

UPDATE: I couldn't find new drawer pulls, so I tried for a brass paint job and didn't like the spray paint I used. So they're navy.

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