Hello World,

I bought this dresser two years ago for $25 at a thrift store. I liked that it was made of real wood and with some TLC it would be like new again. I even has ‘Massachusetts’ stamped on the back, so I’m guessing that is where it was made. Well, two years passed and I didn’t do anything to it except line the drawers with pretty contact paper.

Fast forward to last week, and I finally decided to give my dresser a well-needed makeover. I have started replacing or updating my mismatch broke-college-student furniture, and am aiming to decorate my room in neutrals with pops of metallic.

This dresser needed some love. It had a crooked drawer, and dings and dents like nobody’s business.  I started by removing all the hardware. These drawer pulls in particular left dents in the drawer faces, so using a different set of knobs would mean intense sanding.

At first, I hand-sanded the drawers, but that was going to take hours, so I borrowed my dad’s electric sander. I used a rough grid sandpaper first to remove the stain and most of the dents. Some of the edges were hard to get with the electric sander, so I folded sandpaper and sanded those areas by hand.

Next, I sanded the entire dresser with a finer grit sandpaper to smooth it out. After sanding, I wiped the dresser down with a damp rag and let it dry. To paint my dresser, I whitewashed it by watering down interior satin-finish paint. (Roughly 1/4 paint 3/4 water in a small bucket.) I did two coats of the whitewashed paint, and spray painted my knobs.

I actually wish I had left the knobs in their original color, but for now I am just letting them be. My dresser matches my room so much better now, and I might go in and sponge darker paint on some of the edges, for a more distressed look.

Happy Crafting!