Dressers, the Anti-Nomadic Furniture

So, moving. Long distances. The biggest decision you have to make – do I bring it all? With every move you’d be wise to downsize somewhat, but what about the big stuff? Like furniture? My goal when moving from DC to Pittsburgh was to do it all in the back of my compact SUV and Bill’s standard sedan. And we DID. But that meant that things like my bed and dresser weren’t coming with. Fortunately as I was FINALLY moving into the Pittsburgh apartment, there was already a bed and most of the big stuff I’d need.

Buuuut, what I didn’t get to bring with me was my own dresser. Though my parents had a few options for me back in the Philly area, driving 6 hours one way for a dresser was just not economical. And so, to Craigslist I searched!

After a few weeks, I came across this little beauty. It’s an oldie, but at $15 I figured it couldn’t be beat – AND it was going to easily fit in the corner I had for it.

Bill joined me for brute strength to collect it, and for back-up. It turns out the person selling the dresser was a former classmate of my best friend in their graduate program, so no need for the back-up in this case. However, with Craigslist, it’s always better to play it safe.

Once we got it home, it was time to take it apart and take stock in the condition. Like it was described in the ad, the dresser had seen some ware over the years. Apparently this had been one of those items that had been passed around the family before it made its way to Pittsburgh. There were ink stains and paint splotches in the drawers that lead me to believe it was previously used in an art room at one point. And given it’s age, it had that stale wood smell to it. First step to combat that was to wipe it all down.

I kept it simple with just warm water and it did wonders. Then I zapped it with the magic eraser to get any scuffs off before buffing it all down with furniture polish.

I debated over whether to strip and refinish it, or maybe paint it, but I wanted to actually USE it in a timely manner, so polish was my best bet. And it worked out pretty well!

The polish shined it up, but also brought back some of the beautiful wood tones in the dresser too.

Like you saw above, the drawers weren’t in the best shape. Fortunately with a little wood glue they were repaired easy enough. But that old wood smell still was there. To fix that, I decided to first replace the drawer bottoms.

We found some sturdy thinner board that was perfect, then had someone at Big Orange cut it down to size for us.

To seal out the old wood smell, I also painted the interiors of the drawers with some leftover paint from our headboard and RAST Hack projects. Since it was a smaller project and I needed more control, I used a foam brush for the application.

So, clean interiors, freshly painted and ready to go. BUT before putting the bottoms back into the larger drawers, I primed them and then decided they needed something fun. Get ready, because I did something TOTALLY NEW around here. (Is there a sarcasm font yet?)