Nursery Dresser

We picked up this dresser on Craigslist for $100. It was posted for over $200 but the girl selling it was moving out of state and had to get rid of it so we got it for a steal. It is structurally in excellent condition. It is super heavy and made of solid wood. I don't know where you can find a solid wood dresser for 100 bucks these days, most furniture stores charge upwards of $1000 for a solid wood dresser. We decided to refinish this and use it as the changing table and dresser for the baby's room. I wanted a white dresser in there, and while this piece is already white, there are several marks on the top and on the drawers, it definitely needs a fresh coat of paint. Plus, the hardware is dated and doesn't go with the coastal vibe I have in mind for the nursery.

Since I'm pregnant and my doctor doesn't want me sanding or refinishing any furniture right now, Todd has taken over this little project. I would love to be helping out more, we all know I love a good DIY project, but he is loving working on something that will be used by our little one for many years. We first removed the old hardware. The knobs look so small on such large drawers and are spaced too far apart to be able to easily open and close the larger bottom drawers. Since we knew we would be replacing the hardware and changing the placement, Todd filled in the original holes with wood filler.

We decided since the surface was pretty beat up it would be best to sand it down to get a smooth surface for a fresh coat of paint. Todd started this process at our house, but as you can see in the background, our garage is a disaster zone and the weather has been quite unpredictable lately. He took the dresser over to his parents house to utilize their garage to finish sanding and painting. They have more space where he could lay out all the drawers to dry without fear of a sudden pop up rain shower ruining the paint.

The dresser is going to be right in front of a window in the nursery. We opted for the same white as all of the trim work and doors in our house for the dresser paint. This way everything matches and the dresser won't look weird with the blinds and window casing directly behind it. I am not big on everything being matchy matchy, but if the trim and doors are one shade of white and the dresser a different shade, it would look like we tried to match and missed and would be an eyesore. Or maybe I'm just telling myself that to rationalize my crazy pregnancy brain. haha.

I picked up several handle and knob options from the hardware store and didn't love any of them. Ultimately, we settled on these handles from Lowes. The knobs on our built in cabinets are from the same collection. The knobs on our cabinets have a brushed nickel finish, but we opted for the bronze finish for the dresser pulls. We changed the placement of the handles. We centered the pulls on the smaller top drawers first. Once those were centered, we lined up the hardware on the two larger drawers. Now that the handles are closer together on the larger drawers it is much easier to open and close the drawers.

Todd painted the dresser beautifully. He also put some wax on the bottoms of the drawers to help them glide easily in and out of the dresser. We are so pleased with how the dresser turned out. After he was all done, we moved it into the room. I got to work right away lining the drawers. Now all we need to do is start washing everything and put it all away. We are so excited to fill this piece with all the baby's tiny clothes, blankets and necessities.