Refinishing the Dresser: Part 1

Remember this awesome Drexel dresser that we scored from $110 at Bella Vintage Antique Store in Hartselle?

Two weeks after we bought it, we finally got to working on it. We thought that this would be a weekend project. Silly us!

Turns out it is WAY more difficult than we thought. Those pretty groves in the front don't make it easy.

Not to mention, that under all that white paint, we found pink!

And all of the hardware had been painted, at least once, but knowing our luck, probably more than once. So we are thinking new hardware is in order. The first place I will be looking is Anthropologie, of course.

To get started we gathered all of our supplies.

Little did we know that this was NOT enough stripper. We went through this whole container, a container of stray stripper (which we weren't huge fans of), and then another container of the first kind.

So these are just the supplies gathered at the first shopping experience. We had to go back to the store two more times for more stripper. But we didn't realize that until after we got started.

We took all of the drawers out.

And removed all of the hardware. That piece of wood was in this drawer as a divider of some sort, but it didn't go all the way down the bottom of the drawer, so weird.

Then it was time to get stripping.

The top was by far, the easiest part to strip. Paint on the stipper, wait, wait, wait and then scrape like there is no tomorrow.

We think that someone painted pink right over the original finish and then someone else painted white. The crazy part is we only found pink in random places on the dresser. Not on the top, but on the front, but not on the drawers. Who knows what someone was thinking with that choice.

Eventually, we got it down to this look, after many coats.

After one last coat and some heavy scraping, we were ready for some sanding.

The whole process happened over a two week period, because we kept running out of stripper. And of course, like any sane people, we decided to take another week or so break before tackling the sanding project head on. This weekend project is looking more like a month long project. Stay tuned for the standing.