This ended up being my first blog post because it was a short project that I finished quickly, but it really is part of my bigger project of a full pantry makeover.
While I was in the middle of the pantry remodel, my sister returned this little dresser to me that she had been borrowing. They were packing up their house to move to Alaska and didn’t want to take the dresser. As it sat in my entryway for several days and I kept walking around it while I was working on painting the pantry. I had the idea that the dresser would fit perfectly underneath the bottom shelf of the pantry and give me some closed storage space for things I didn’t want to look at all the time. So I decided to give the dresser a quick update before I put it in its new home.
I originally acquired the dresser a few months before my oldest son was born. Some friends had purchased a house on Craigslist and it came with a lot of extra furniture and junk included. They were tossing this dresser so I nabbed it, planning to do a makeover and use it for baby clothes. All I ended up doing then was fixing the drawers and the body of the dresser, as it was falling apart. I never got around to painting it but used it until the next baby was born, at which point I switched to a larger dresser to fit two kids clothes, and my sister borrowed this little one. (I tried to find a picture of me working on the dresser originally, but can’t find it anywhere. Humph.)
Since I was already painting the pantry shelves and the door trim, I went ahead and put a few coats on the dresser as well. I removed the old drawer pulls (which were old fashioned, chipped wooden ones) and painted the faces of the drawers also. I painted it with my favorite white trim paint, Behr Ultra Pure White Semi-Gloss Enamel (No. 3050).
It took two or three coats to cover the stains and scratches. After the first coat, I used some wood filler to cover up some blemishes in the front of the dresser and also the holes from the drawer pulls, because the new ones I had gotten were center pull instead of the two knobs on each drawer. I got the new pulls from the local Habitat ReStore (actually renamed but that’s what it used to be) and paid $2.18 for three matching drawer pulls and a random bonus one. Not bad!
After the paint dried and I was satisfied with the finish, I got the drill and a tape measure and carefully measured, drilled new holes, and installed the new pulls. It was a little tricky because I’ve never installed drawer pulls before and each pull had two holes that then needed to be lined up horizontally with each other and centered. I finally figured it out and did drawers #2 and 3 in about half the time it took me to do drawer #1.
The dresser was very slightly too tall* to fit under the bottom shelf in the pantry, so I drew a line and cut a half inch or so off the bottom with a circular saw.
It looks great and I’m really happy with how it turned out! The new drawer hardware and fresh coat of paint made a huge difference. All told, the time spent working on the dresser was probably only about two hours. Because I already had the paint and wood filler, the total cost was $2.18 for the drawer pulls. Stay tuned for the full pantry reveal!
*Unfortunately I measured and cut the dresser before I installed the new floor, and when I installed the new floor it ended up being lower than the original floor, so… there’s a gap between the dresser and the shelf above it. Oh well.
