Last week was a total wash for us — between adjusting to the sleep deprivation that comes with a new baby and Brandon being back at work, we just didn’t do anything to move our project along last week. Giving myself lots and lots and lots of grace for skipping a week, but also patting myself on the back for taking it easy when I needed to.

The wonderful thing about our project is it doesn’t require a whole lot of building or DIY. It’s the perfect project for where we are in life right now (read: transitioning to life with a newborn/two kids). Our bedframe and rug are ordered so now we hurry up and wait!

One thing we did get around to doing this week was getting the cabinet door on our dresser! I’m actually really excited to share this story with you because until now, I’d only documented it on my instagram stories.

BEFORE

We had next to no furniture when we moved out of our studio and into our one bedroom apartment, not just because we’d been living in a studio for almost three years, but because our particular studio apartment was from the 1920s and came with lots of built-ins.

Once we moved, we found ourselves in need of furniture. Enter this dresser!

It had been sitting in Brandon’s parents’ garage for years. It was my father-in-law’s when he was a kid and then passed on to Brandon when he was growing up. It had been painted white with different colored knobs when it was in Brandon’s nursery and the cabinet door had fallen off decades before we got our hands on it.

In all honesty, I didn’t mind that it was painted white. The brightly colored knobs weren’t my style (if you couldn’t tell, I’m an earth tones kind of gal) but I always knew the dresser had good bones. Plus it was vintage! I couldn’t help but love something that had literally been passed down from father to son.

I spent the entire year and a half that we lived in that apartment talking about how I was going to paint the knobs green and give the dresser a fresh coat of white paint. I never got around to it because wet paint with a toddler just wasn’t an adventure I wanted to experience.

It worked out that I never got around to my initial plan for this dresser, because we ended up moving three months into the pandemic. We found a place just outside the city that gave us more space plus a private backyard.

RESTORING THE DRESSER

Even though I would have loved to put my 8th grade woodshop and high school stagecraft skills to good use on this dresser, being seven months pregnant during the hottest part of the year kept me from showing off. After a lot of thought, I decided that this dresser should go in our room so we could have a spot to do diaper changes once Luna was born.

Once we decided where the dresser was going, Brandon was determined to strip the paint off the dresser just to see what it looked like underneath all the white paint.

He of course started the process of stripping the paint during the hottest heatwave of the summer 🥵 but it didn’t stop him one bit. He was out in our little yard sanding at 8AM and going until work or the heat called him inside. What we naively thought would be a three day project turned into a week and a half of stripping and sanding and more trips to Home Depot than we care to admit.

The wood underneath the white paint looked like it was walnut (we later found out that it was a walnut veneer). We’d planned on staining the dresser with a walnut stain but before we did, Brandon asked our friend who builds furniture for fun what he thought we should do. Our woodworking pal suggested we use an oil based finish since we already had the wood tone we were looking for. I’m so glad we took his advice because it was perfect!

I ordered some really beautiful brass handles for the drawers from CB2. We’d ordered the handles based on our measurements but when we went to install the handles, we realized that the spacing between the existing holes wasn’t standard. We said screw it and drilled new holes and I’m really happy we did.

The dresser was practically done, it was just missing the cabinet door. We enlisted our friend’s help and he was kind enough to craft the cabinet door for us. It worked out well that he helped us out because we quickly realized that the dresser was probably a custom build! It wasn’t quite straight in one spot so the perfectly straight door needed to be adjusted to fit properly.

After months of living with the cabinet door propped up against the wall, we finally got it installed! That’s the beauty of One Room Challenge, it’s just the push we needed to finally finish this labor of love.

AFTER

Labor of love is the only description I can think of to describe this project. We’ve never really had the furniture or space to venture into DIY territory, so this was very much a novice run at bringing new life to an old piece of furniture. But can I just say, I love the final product!

The rich warm tone of the wood looks so good with our fluffy vintage rug (that belonged to Brandon’s maternal grandparents once upon a time) and adds some earthy goodness to our white walled room.

When we showed the final product to my father-in-law, he said he remembered the dresser having brass drawer handles. I love that my gut instinct to lean into the mid century vibes led us to end up with a truly classic piece. I’m very much looking forward to having this vintage gem in my home forever (or until one of our kids needs it).

READ ON