Antique Chest of Drawers

One of my favorite restorations.
Craigslist find for 10 bucks that was almost not worth it simply because of the terrible shape it was in. Three out of the 4 drawers were falling apart, the veneer on the bottom was frayed, and it was 2 seconds away from the dump. BUT – it had this cool feel to it with the curves, mirror and simple features.

Repairs… lots of repairs. I took apart the previous owners shoddy repair work – then set and glued all the drawers back together, as well as reset all the drawer slides. I didn’t have to make any new pieces, but was able to repair all the original stuff. I fixed the bottom veneer using wood glue and putty made from the dresser’s sawdust. The rest of the veneer was in good shape!
Once everything was fixed – I sanded and sanded.

Because I had spent so much time on the drawers already, I decided to paint each drawer inside a different color. Turned out great!

For the outside, I made my own white Chalk Paint. There was a little strip of patterned veneer across the top of the dresser that I really liked, so I taped it off and didnt paint it – giving the dresser some of it’s original charm. I applied a couple coats of the chalk paint, then sanded lightly to give it the distressed look I wanted. Once painted and sanded – I lightly rubbed some dark wood stain over the entire dresser. This brings down the brightnes of the white, while also giving the dresser a TON of character as the stain would seep into some of the crevices of the chalk paint.
I finished it off with a couple coats of ploycrylic.

I gave it some new hardware, screws, and polished up the ol’ mirror. All the drawers functioned like new, and it looked like a million bucks.