i first stopped into the moncton valley village and i found this epic dresser
there's no price on it so they're just looking they're gonna ask the manager
but i'm pretty sure i'm gonna pick this up sold
sold sold sold sold
i found this awesome late mid-century dresser on my very first thrifting trip
in my new hometown and it didn't even have a price sticker on it yet so they gave me one for 29.99
and i had a coupon for 20 off from donating some of the kids outgrown clothing so i was
able to scoop this up for the low low price of 24 as soon as i saw it i fell in love with
these really unique wood handles and i wanted to fix it up and give it a fresh finish but still
keep its really groovy 70s aesthetic by taking a quick look at the back of the dresser i can tell
that the body is an mdf and laminate veneer over a particle board structure but the handles
the drawer fronts and the base are all solid wood probably maple so i'm going to refinish
those to showcase the wood that's hiding under this faux wood sticker and then paint
the rest of the dresser that is laminate in a very 70s color the first step is always to
take the piece apart and clean it up i found a few bonus items under some of the drawers and then
i vacuumed up all of the dust and washed the dresser down with a tsp alternative this is
just gonna get any old furniture polish residue and the rest of the dirt off of these surfaces
next i flipped the whole dresser upside down so that i could remove the base section
and give it a better clean this will also make it way easier for me to sand it down
now for some minor repairs there's a decent chunk missing on the edge here
and a few nicks out of the back as well as a couple of bubbled spots on the top
i think i got this little tube of plastic wood as a stocking stuffer last christmas
so i thought i'd give it a shot but it just wasn't gripping and holding on to the surfaces at all so
i scraped that out of there and ended up using some of this elmer's wood filler instead
the bottom two drawers also had some pretty deep gouges so those got filled in as well
while i waited for my wood filler to set up i decided to start sanding the
base i put some 120 grit sandpaper on my surf prep 3x4 detail sander
and after getting the finish off of one side of one leg i realized that this process would be
much easier if i just took the legs off of the frame and sanded all of the pieces individually
by the time i had stripped back the base my wood filler was dry so i sanded all
of those spots smooth and also gave the rest of the shiny slick laminate surfaces
a scuff up so that my primer will have a good surface to grip onto
i'm priming the dresser box and all of the drawers with this bin shellac base primer to seal up the
porous spots of wood filler so that the paint looks the same and sits on the surface the same
on those spots as it does on the smooth laminate surface and it's also going to seal up the bubbled
spots in the mdf top that i had to sand smooth and make sure that those don't absorb any more
moisture from my paint this primer is no fun to clean out of my sprayer so i prefer to roll it on
and then just give it a quick sand with some 400 grit sandpaper to get rid of any roller texture
i wrapped all of the drawers in some pre-taped masking plastic to keep any paint over spray
from making a mess on the insides of the drawers and since my husband has finally fixed up my
poor old frankenstein of an air compressor i was able this week to switch back to my favorite old
friend the gravity fed hvlp pneumatic spray gun i picked up a fresh one just for this
joyous occasion in my paint stash i had this stunning color called bohemian gold by melange
it's the kind of color that needs a specific canvas and i think this dresser is the one
but yellows tend to be really sheer and take way more coats than other colors to get full coverage
so i didn't think that this pint was going to be enough paint i also had a pint of melange's
tobacco brown which is in the same family so i decided to double up my paint volume and just
mix the two pints together so i wouldn't need to worry about running out of paint
once i had the two colors mixed i added about half a cup of water
to thin it out and then i just strained that straight into my spray gun
since i haven't used one of these guns for a few months and this one
is brand new i grabbed an amazon box to spray onto and get all of my settings the way that
i like them make sure that everything was flowing smoothly and then i was ready to go
bye
like i said this yellow is going to take a lot more coats to get full coverage so i made sure
to keep each coat of paint really light and didn't stress about trying to cover up all of the primer
in the first few passes while my paint dried i pulled my sander and shop vac out onto the
driveway in this beautiful kind of overcast day and started working on sanding back these poles
because they're really curvy i didn't want to accidentally mis-shape them with a flat sander
so i added a foam interface pad to my surf prep and then some 120 grit sandpaper again this is
going to let the sandpaper conform to the shape of the handles and keep that curved integrity
obviously i couldn't get my sander onto the interior contours here so i grabbed
my little rotary tool and it's sanding drum attachment and use that to clean up
these spots on the inside and then once i had all of the old
stain and finish removed i just hand sanded it to really smooth it out
i did also decide that since the top row of drawers wasn't badly damaged like the bottom ones
that i wanted to try and keep them wood as well so i ended up standing
off that primer so that i could restain these two
after my second coat of paint was dry i gave it a super light smooth out with some 400
grit sandpaper and then added an additional two coats for a total of four coats and again while
i waited for paint to dry in between coats i just kept working on all of the wood parts
i chose this bare water-based stain in the color english chestnut to stain
everything it's really easy to use you just brush it on and then wipe back the excess
but this stain tends to give a really light effect so i ended up doing three coats of
it to get the richness that i was after and i'm not a hundred percent sold on the final
color that i ended up with i might ultimately end up sanding all of this back to the natural
maple but i'm sure you will all share your thoughts with me in the comments section
once all of my paint was good and dry i went ahead and cleaned out my spray gun
and then reloaded it with some of verithin's water-based polyurethane
and sprayed on two coats over the paint to give it an extra durable satin finish
i opted to seal up all of the wood accents by buffing in some of fusion mineral paints beeswax
finish this stuff has a little bit of hemp oil mixed into it as well and that will absorb down
into the wood and give a really soft natural sheen while keeping the wood protected and hydrated
the last thing i had to do was reassemble everything so i screwed the handles back
onto the drawers then i bolted the legs back onto their frame
and took the dresser inside the house to screw the base back on
this was a fun departure from my usual color scheme
i hope that you had fun seeing the process of this funky retro makeover
make sure that you're subscribed for tons more furniture flipping adventures
i never know what's coming up next but thank you for watching and i will catch you all next time
you