Would you look at this beast! It sure did turn into a beauty, parts falling off and all. I couldn’t pass this one up. It definitely needed a lot of TLC. My friend Sara (wife of my sons friend), was originally going to refinish this piece but didn’t have the time with two cute full-energy kiddies to take care of, plus moving to Vermont.
Painting An Old Oak Dresser
This piece is beautiful even in its raw state of disarray. I tried to keep the original pulls but a screw was missing that would be seen and I couldn’t find an antique one to replace it. The cup pulls worked great and I found old knobs I had in my stash as well.
The filigree on this was in pieces. Even though I had most of them, I had to cut back the right one in a couple areas to make them the same. I love the sea serpent look of the door details though, just fabulous artwork!
I had to do a little creative work to get this baby finished up! It was well worth the time.
This had to be cleaned and glued and clamped no doubt, but the inside of the drawers were horrible. Yuck! Not sure what the original owners used this for, maybe oily parts in the garage?
Gluing And Clamping
Lots of clamping in this next photo, I had to glue some areas. This was when I had already painted/washed this beauty also. It was coming along nicely.
But wait, the cleaning and gluing pieces together wasn’t what took so much time to repair this beauty. With the warped top, I decided to remove it.
I actually had an old top from a piece of furniture that would fit perfectly. Well, this top had veneer that needed to be removed…on both sides. Sooooo, my hubster helped me to scrape and hammer the veneer off, you can see that in the photo below. It took a couple of hours into a couple of days, but we both kept going at it. I wish I had someone to video us. We were bouncing from one side to the other, and at the same time my hubster was putting together a cool bench seat, which you can see in this post here.
And…after all that work trying to remove veneer on both side of the replacement top I thought would be better for this piece, I decided to use the original top. Turned it over and sanded and glued and attached. Washed it with the black paint and bam! Beauty.
Removing Veneer
The key holes were boring and I didn’t have any keys. I searched and purchased multiple skeleton keys, but none fit. The locks were so rusted they would never be in working order. So I made some pretty moulds to cover the holes. It worked perfectly! *Note to self: paint molds prior to gluing.*
With some graphite color paint (AS) that I watered down, I painted sections at a time wiping off as I went along. This gave the finish the grayish-black color, leaving the grain to come through beautifully!
This finished buffet is gorgeous! I wish you could see it’s true beauty in person.
