I finally finished up this custom dresser for one of my customers. I want to say first of all, I love it so much I tried to talk her out of it! This piece reminds me so much of my childhood. In my middle- class home, the furniture that went into children's rooms were the left-over pieces that didn't work anywhere else. My dresser, when I was growing up was actually an older buffet type piece. It had two drawers across the top, a bigger one underneath, and then on the lowest row there were two doors, one of which never wanted to stay shut. The paint was thick and reminded me of frosting on a cake and the handles were lacey metal, also painted with thick white paint. I wish I still had that piece!!
This dresser came with thick white paint also. It had been prepped really well, in fact too well to restore the original mahogany finish. It was sanded REALLY well, sealed and painted. Sealed because it is mahogany and would eventually bleed tannins right through the paint. The only way to do a good job on this dresser was to take everything off and start over. It has a lot of detail so that made the paint removal even more challenging.
I actually sanded, used Citrus Strip, and a heat gun to remove all of the layers. There were also a lot of bumps and bruises to be fixed, loose legs, and loose top and some missing trim to fix. I wasn't able to match the trim perfectly. It had jagged edges and I at least wanted to minimize the chance that it would get caught and break more.
I actually had broken a paint brush while I was redoing this dresser and I used it to fill in some of the gap in the trim.
This dresser was painted with a pretty mint green paint and finished off with some poly.
I made some fancy temporary handles from vintage jewelry and some jewelry wire I had on hand.
Delivery Thursday!!!
