Dresser Redo

     There are lots of Henry things that we've wanted to have firsthand: carseat/stroller combo, crib, swing, pack-n-play, breast pump, diaper bag, etc. There haven't been very many things that we've been comfortable buying secondhand. We've actually only bought one so far-Henry's dresser. We bought it off of KSL for $25 and it was kind of in rough condition. Our other options for dressers were more expensive and much smaller so we just went with the $25 KSL find. Here are some "before" photos:

The color was a little rough with some scuffs in assorted locations.

There's a panel of wood missing in between the second and third drawers.

I also hate these knobs.

Another picture of the knobs I hate.

The top was the roughest part. Aside from the damage you can see in the picture, there's a good amount of water damage all over the rest of the top.

  The first thing I wanted to do with the dresser was sand down the top to get rid of the layer of water damage. So we got a belt sander, and (no big deal) I used it pretty effectively.

There was SO MUCH sawdust!

Jeff just LOVES to use this feature on our new camera where the thing in the foreground is in focus and the background is blurry.

Another foreground focus/background blurry shot. Pretty cool though, eh?

     After the sanding, Jeff pretty much took care of the rest of the project. He's just so sweet like that. First he sanded down the sides of the top with our little sanding...bar? I don't know what it's called, but it looks like a really big bar of soap but covered in sandpaper. After the sanding was all done, he put together a couple of wood pieces to fill in that tacky gap in between the second and third drawer. It was this whole big thing to try and get the right size of pieces we needed at Home Depot, but we eventually figured it out and Jeff installed them without too much of a struggle.

So Jeff nailed in the first piece, then glued the second piece to the first.

We temporarily held these wrenches on the wood to help the glue stick, but it held pretty well on its own.

Jeff still held the wood together as a precaution, but it dried really quickly.

  Then he painted the whole dresser the same yellow as our nursery.

My job was to sit in the camp chair and take the old knobs off of the dresser drawers. Those drawers are HEAVY, p.s. and the knobs were really hard to unscrew. But as I mentioned before, I didn't like those knobs one single bit, so it was worth it to me to just get them off. Once the knobs were gone, Jeff was able to paint the drawers and the new knobs. The paint dried super quickly because it was incredibly hot and sunny outside.

I had big plans to do something really cool with these knobs, but I couldn't find all the stuff I needed to make it happen. So they're staying just plain ol' yellow for now.

   So with the gap filled, the top sanded, the dresser and drawers painted, and the knobs switched out, the dresser was looking much better! We were finally able to get it into Henry's room so we could get some of the stuff out of his crib and into his dresser.

Even though it still looks a tiny bit rough, it looks much better than it used to!

BEFORE

AFTER

  That's it! What do you think?