you don't always need to reinvent the wheel when it comes to flipping pieces of furniture i mean
i really like reinventing all of the pieces that i work on but every once in a while a
really special piece of furniture crosses my path that is beautiful enough just as it is
my amazing across the street neighbors are just getting ready to start some major home renovations
and obviously they know what i do for a living so when they decided to part ways with one of their
cherished antique dressers they came across the street and asked if i would be interested
in giving it a new life and of course i said yes if you are a regular viewer here on the channel
you have probably already noticed this 1930s mahogany dresser hanging out in the background
of quite a few videos as soon as i saw it in my neighbor's garage i fell in love with that
burled veneer on the front this piece has already been refinished once and the top now has some new
cat scratches around all of the edges and a pretty big gouge down the center of the top
it is also missing its original mirror which is not at all a big deal i probably
would have removed that anyways but i'm gonna do everything in my power
to restore this dresser to its former glory i started off by removing these matte black
knobs they are not original to the piece i don't know what the original dresser had as
hardware but i'm sure it was something in the brass family and much more ornate than these
now i always start all of my furniture flips with a really thorough cleaning
this one however is gonna get a lot of sanding which is gonna make a lot of dust in the garage
so to start i'm just gonna go ahead and clean all of the gunk and garage grime off of the top
surface of this dresser so that when i go and sand that i'm not grinding all of that stuff
down into the wood pores once i'm finished with all of the mess involved in sanding i
will come back and give the rest of the piece inside and out a really good clean
once the top was clean and dry i could reassess the damage it's nothing too bad or too deep there
are a few little marks that i may have made myself using it as a work surface but if i take a look
at the back of this piece i can see that there is still a really good thick layer of veneer
for me to work with so i will be able to give it a good thorough sanding without busting through
that veneer i'm going to be using my ryobi 5-inch random orbital sander and i'm starting with an 80
grit sandpaper this is a coarse grit which is pretty aggressive especially for a veneer
if you're a beginner or you're not sure if you have veneer or how thick your veneer is i would
recommend starting a little bit softer maybe a 100 or a 120 grit and just a few quick tips for
sanding surfaces like this you want to make sure that you're moving your sander back and forth
with the grain of the wood and not against the grain of the wood you also want to make
sure that you're not applying a lot of pressure to your sander or digging it in that can really
tear through the substrate and it's also a big reason for those nasty little swirl marks that
are oh so common when sanding wood you want to go slowly and let the sander do the work
once i had the previous finish removed and all of the damage smoothed out i came back with my
same sander and some 100 grit sandpaper and did a quick pass and then i came back with a 120 grit
sandpaper and did a quick pass and then i came back with a 180 grit sandpaper and did a quick
pass to make sure that this was luxuriously smooth i went through all the same steps on the drawers
it's important to gradually work your way up through the different grits of sandpaper
again to really minimize those nasty swirl marks that we can tend to get
unfortunately on my last pass with my 180 grit sandpaper i noticed
that i did bust through the veneer really minorly on the edge of one of the drawers and i
also decided not to touch the top drawer with that burled veneer i'm sure that that is a much thinner
veneer and that drawer is in really pristine condition so i'm just gonna leave it alone
now that i have all of my sanding mess cleaned up i am going to go in and stain the top
of this dresser with some of minwax's red mahogany wood stain i'm pretty sure this is the same color
that was used on the rest of the dresser and fingers crossed it will be a perfect match
this is an oil-based product that has quite an intense odor
so you either want to wear a respirator or make sure that you are outside with really
good ventilation so that you're not breathing in those fumes you also want to wear gloves
because this will definitely stain your skin i'm just using a lint-free rag to wipe my stain
onto the dresser trying to go with the direction of the grain as much as possible
i also had a tiny little spot here on the side that i caught with my sander so i just went in
with my stain there as well and i'm gonna do my best to blend in this little blemish
once my first pass with the stain had had a few hours to soak in and dry down a little bit i came
back and looked at it and you can tell it looks horrible it is patchy and streaky that could have
totally been avoided with a minwax prestine wood conditioner which is just a product that you brush
on before you're ready to stain that helps the wood absorb the stain more evenly unfortunately
i don't have any on hand right now and all of our hardware stores in ontario are closed so to
resolve this issue i just went back with a second coat of stain on the top and the drawers to even
everything out remember how i said all of the hardware stores in ontario are closed right now
i really wanted to use an oil-based wipe-on poly to seal this dresser up for protection but
i couldn't get any and all of these sealers that i typically use on my painted pieces are water-based
because the stain is oil-based and the sealer that i have is water-based
they have a typical oil and water reaction if you get them involved with each other too soon
so to combat that i needed to let the stain dry on the dresser all the way
i left it out in the garage for probably about 56 hours two and a half days to really dry down
then it was safe for me to come back with my favorite poly top coat and seal everything up my
go-to ride or die top coat is this verity diamond wood finish in a satin sheen it is milky in the
can and applies a little milky it can be brushed you could use a foam brush or a sponge to apply
it but today i'm going to be using my gravity-fed hvlp pneumatic spray gun just for a really quick
easy application after a little bit of fiddling around with the settings on my gun i got it right
and applied a really thick juicy layer of top coat to the top of this dresser i really wanted
it to sink down into those bare wood fibers and give me a nice base to apply my next few coats
for the rest of the dresser i turned on all of the settings on my gun and just did a really light
misting over the rest of the dresser my goal here was to match the sheens from the really
flat sheen that was on the dresser to begin with up to the satin sheen that i'm applying to the top
this first coat of poly took about two hours to dry and looked perfect when i came out to
check on it i went over everything with a super fine rad pad this is just really soft
sandpaper to knock down a teeny tiny bit of texture that was left behind by my sprayer
and make sure that my next layer sat super extra smooth on there
after wiping away that little bit of dust that i created i came back and did the same
thing i ended up applying three total coats of poly over the entire dresser
the coats on the top and on those two drawers that i sanded down
i went a little bit heavier on and then three light misted coats on the rest of the dresser
this whole poly process took just over six hours to get everything sprayed and dried then
i brought the dresser back inside and i decided to reattach the matte black knobs that came with
it from my neighbor's house i just really like the way that they kind of blend into the wood
and let all of that beautiful wood grain speak for itself with no blingy distractions maybe you
would have chosen something a little more flashy but for me and my style i like to
keep it simple let's take a look at the final results i think this is quite the masterpiece
i really don't have much material invested in this flip at all i mean a little bit of
stain but i'll have that can probably for the next 10 or 20 years to use on other projects
a couple of rags and a few sheets of sandpaper so really the cost is maybe around five dollars
and i'm still a little bit torn on how i would feel comfortable pricing this piece in my market
i think if it was one of my normal painted dressers i would probably put it
somewhere in the 400 maybe even up to 450 range but i really love it and i think i
might be able to push that and get a little bit more you really need to remember that pricing
furniture flips is drastically different depending on your location the market
around you the style of furniture that you're working with and a whole bunch of other factors
so please take my pricing guidelines with a grain of salt this is my specific market in
south central ontario and these numbers just don't apply in a lot of other places around the world
anyways i really hope that you guys enjoyed coming along with me for this little fix up
of this gorgeous mahogany dresser i'm going to leave a few other videos here that i think you
might be interested in if you want to keep watching and i will catch you guys next time