The Homemade Nursery: A Custom Dresser Remodel

As you may remember from my post about my Nurture Hope quilt, I am quite fortunate to be pregnant.  My husband and I had been holding off on doing much in terms of preparation for the baby until we took holidays back in November.  Then we got started and have been plugging away every since.  I'm going to share individual projects we embarked on over the past few months, and then a final blog post with the big reveal of the whole room.  

One of the first things I knew I was going to want to do for the baby's room was refinish a dresser.  I find that most dressers bought brand new these days are kinda..... hunks of garbage.  They are wood printed veneer pasted over junky particle board, and fall apart at nothing, all the while not even looking nice.  And they want $300 for them!  I wanted something with holding power, something strong and real, something worth the money.  

So I took a tour of the local thrift shops and used furniture stores, hoping to find something made of real wood, in a vintage style that could handle some modernizing.  I was super lucky to find this mid-century modern dresser, in good condition, just asking for some love.  

I feel like I stole this beauty.... it was only $75!

So I took it home, and sanded all the varnish off using my fancy new power sander (because doing this by hand would have killed me).  

Sanded and ready for staining

Once it was down to bare wood, my husband took over and stained the frame of the dresser a nice walnut colour, and sealed it with a clear coat finish to make it all shiny and nice.  I painted the drawers white, and then we sprayed shellac on all the unexposed surfaces to seal in the slightly musty smell the dresser had acquired over the years.  

Next, we attached the hardware.  I found the most perfect brass animal heads for the top two smaller drawers at Anthropologie (and spent almost as much as the dresser itself on them!). 

For the four larger bottom drawers, we spray painted the original hardware with a brass paint to match the pulls.  

Almost perfect!

I am so proud of how this dresser turned out! 

The final product

Close up

It is definitely a classic example of not knowing how to do something, googling it to learn, and executing it well.  I encourage anyone thinking of giving an old piece of furniture a makeover to give it a try.  We didn't find any aspect of the project difficult, and the results are so worth the effort.  

This dresser is the perfect addition to our baby's Homemade Nursery!