hello welcome back to my channel my name is katie i am a full-time furniture flipper and in this
video i'm going to be bringing you along with me as i take an adorable little antique dresser that
i found for free on the side of the road fix it up and give it a brand new modern makeover
in case you missed last week's video i made a pretty big announcement about some important
changes that are happening to my furniture flipping business salvaged by k scott i have been
finding fixing and rehabbing pieces of furniture and reselling them for a profit for the last five
years but now because of this incredible community that we have been able to build here on youtube
i've decided to shut down the sales portion of my business and instead all of the furniture flips
that you see me working on here on the channel are going to be donated to local charities instead so
please make sure that you are subscribed and have your notifications bell turned on so that
you never miss out on a brand new video from me and now that we've got all of that business stuff
out of the way let's get into this makeover this tiny three-drawer dresser has kind of
a french provincial vibe to it i can't find any markings so i can't say the age for sure
i think it's getting pretty close to about 100 years old and it has definitely seen
more than one makeover in its day i like to start off all of my furniture projects by removing the
drawers and taking off any hardware i don't know that these knobs are original to this piece but
i am definitely going to be taking them off and replacing them with something a little fancier
this funky butterfly contact paper drawer liner also needs to go there were quite a
few cobwebs on the inside of this dresser so i gave everything a really good vacuum and then
i was ready to clean i like to clean with tsp or tri-sodium phosphate which is a really heavy-duty
degreaser and deglosser that is going to get any dirt or grime off of this surface before i
move on to my next step two of the drawers have these carved details and while i do
think that they're beautiful they are not going to go with the more sleek minimalistic design that
i have in mind for this dresser so i'm going to go ahead and fill them in with some bondo
auto body filler this is a two-part epoxy product just like minwax's high performance wood filler
or varathanes classic wood filler bondo does also make a wood filler product but i don't have access
to that and this is pretty much the same stuff there is a beige putty inside the can and then
it also comes with this little tube of cream hardener which is red all you do is mix the two
products together until the color is consistent and then you are ready to apply it to your repairs
a little warning here this is very stinky stuff so you do want to make sure that you
are working in a well ventilated area and wearing a respirator to protect your lungs
this product does also set up and dry very quickly so you want to make sure
that you're only mixing up the amount that you need and that you're moving quickly
after about 30 minutes of dry time my bondo was ready to be sanded smooth
i put some 80 grit paper on my surf prep 3x4 electric ray sander
so that i could remove any excess bondo and start smoothing out these drawers
it is extremely common when you are trying to fill in deep details like this or even hardware
holes for it to take two or three or even four sometimes applications of your filler to really
get a smooth even finish after i sanded down my first application i definitely had some little
pockets and air bubbles in there so i mixed up some more bondo and applied a second layer
while that was drying i switched out the sandpaper on my sander to some 180 grit
so that i could start smoothing out the rest of the dresser this thing has been painted a
lot i think i counted four different colors on there so there are lots of
brush marks painted over chipped areas and drips that needed to be smoothed out
i also made sure to take a few minutes to sand the inside of the drawers
they weren't in terrible condition but they did have some staining and we're just
kind of dirty so a fresh sand is going to bring that wood right back to life
when i was all done with my sanding i grabbed a damp microfiber cloth to wipe back any dust
i'm going to be spraying this piece with my gravity fed hvlp pneumatic spray gun so i
want it to take a couple of minutes to mask off the drawers to protect them from any overspray
next up it is time to prime i am using my all-time favorite tried and true
zinzer bin shellac based primer this stuff is heavy duty it is going to seal in
any potential bleed through spots from coming up through my new finish and it's also going to give
me a really nice even substrate across all of the different textures that i've got going on
i've got bare wood wood filler previously painted pieces so this is just going to make
sure that everything is a nice consistent finish i was able to really quickly spray two coats of
primer over all of the areas that i was going to be painting and i do want to mention because i've
got a lot of questions recently about cleaning this shellac based primer out of my spray gun
shellac and water do not mix so you need to make sure that your spray gun is completely
dry before you add your primer into the gun and then when you're ready to clean it out i just pour
a little bit of regular household ammonia into my gun and pull the trigger a few times to let that
ammonia get down through the spraying mechanisms that will break up the shellac enough that you
can go on and clean out your gun with just regular soap and water cleanup like normal after my primer
had dried i could see that there was still a lot more texture on the drawers than i wanted there
was a lot of wood grain showing through where i had sanded through all of the coats of paint
and i could also see the outlines of those areas that i had filled in with bondo to fix all of that
i turned to some lightweight drywall spackling and i just used a putty knife to apply a really thin
skim coat over the drawers to fill in all of those imperfections once this is dry and
i sand it back with a 400 grit fine sandpaper it is going to fill in any divots wood grain
anything that's going on that i don't want to be going on this stuff is going to make it disappear
then i will apply another coat of primer to seal that all up and i'm ready to move on to paint
for the paint on this dainty little dresser i chose housing canvas chalk finish furniture
paint in the color dusty rose i filled up a clean spray gun with some paint and poured
in a little bit of water i never measure this i don't have any ratios to share i just go by feel
i pour them both into my gun and give it a good shake to mix i actually sprayed my first coat of
paint with the dresser upside down just so that i could get around those little feet really well
and then i flipped everything the right way around and gave it another two quick coats of paint
once my last coat of paint was dry i noticed that there was just a little bit of a rough texture
left behind from the sprayer so i used some more 400 grit sandpaper and a really light hand
just to smooth that out to seal up and protect my new paint job
i'm going to be using verithin diamond wood finish in my favorite satin sheen
i like to apply two thick coats or three thinner coats to the top of my furniture pieces
just because that's where they receive the most wear and tear and then i do two coats on the body
the next morning i brought everything into my kitchen for finishing touches and to get
it ready for photos i decided to put these gorgeous brass drop poles from lee valley
on the bottom two drawers i think they mirror the curvy details really well and then on the
top drawer i dug through my stash of antique pulls and grab these beautiful little rosettes
did you think i was done because i thought i was done but i'm not once i had all the hardware on i
tried to push in this bottom drawer and it didn't fit it was catching along the top and also on the
sides so i had to pull it back out take it back out to the garage i used some 80 grit
coarse sandpaper to grind away as much wood as i could off of the top and the sides of the drawer
after quite a lot of fussing and sanding i finally got the drawer
back to a point where it would slide into its spot nicely i grabbed a small artist brush just to
touch up my paint job on the top edge of that drawer and then i grabbed some of dixie belle's
big mama's butter and smeared it around on the inside of these old wooden drawers
to rehydrate and condition the wood and leave this antique piece with a fresh citrus scent
i found this dresser for free and i've got about forty dollars of material costs invested into this
flip with about four and a half or five hours worth of labor like i mentioned this dresser
is going to be donated but if i was planning on listing it for sale on facebook marketplace in my
local market i'd probably be asking somewhere between 300 and 350 dollars that is right on
par with similar pieces of refurbished furniture that are currently listed for sale by my furniture
flipping peers and still a really great deal on a solid wood piece of furniture thank you
so much for hanging out with me again today i hope that you are inspired to look at some of your own
furniture a little bit differently and maybe even pick up a can of paint i'm gonna leave a few more
videos over here that i think you might like to watch next and i will catch you guys next time