DIY: The Dresser (Part 2)…

Man oh man, Sunday morning I wake up and I’m fuming because I have that dresser in the basement and I have to go back to Home Depot again. I can’t very well leave the dresser the color it is and I don’t want to move it upstairs unless it’s white. My only other solutions would be to put it back on craigslist and that doesn’t make any sense because I still need a dresser. So finally at 1 pm I force myself to go back and get my supplies. 1 and a half hour later I have everything:

But wait it costs me $157.00. How does this happen when YHL only spent $31.51 to include the cost of their dresser. Well I should mention that I speed read and when I go to their total I didn’t actually read the total tally up details, the majority of that stuff they already owned. Had I factored in the cost of the $50 sander and $22 dollar primer, or the $6 in paint brushes/rollers, etc. I would have realized this dresser was really going to cost me close to $200.00. Which was fine, but now I’m stressed because I’m thinking oh I hope this turns out alright. I mean how awesome would this be if I had the whole “this one time when I refinished a dresser” story verses a “the one time I spent $200 bucks to throw out a CL dresser” story. So I get home, spread out all my supplies, put the drop clothes down and get the dresser prepped for refinishing:

I’ve got such anxiety about this I don’t even eat lunch and I get to sanding. Important lesson #1 wear a hair cap.

I must say sanding the dresser wasn’t super hard. I’m looking at my handiwork and I am feeling a little better, but I’m just not sure how this is going to end up.

Next you have to prime it and I end up letting it dry over night, because I’ve exhausted myself.

The whole dresser thing is a long drawn out process, not giving me the instant gratification I need. I have to put three coats of white paint and then the poly which takes two days to completely dry. I will tell you in between the second and third coat of paint I did tell Jedd I didn't think it was going to look good. I could still see the grain of the wood peeking out, the third coat really made a huge difference.

Finally after five long days it’s ready to move back upstairs. I decide to keep the existing hardware because I just want to use the thing. Sorry the pictures are so dark, I didn’t realize until just now but I’ll have to put better ones up.

The dresser is actually white, though you can’t tell in the pictures because of the lighting. But you get the point. So now I have a hand sander, almost a whole gallon of left over primer and some poly. I’m on craigslist every day now looking for something else I can refinish. Looking back it wasn’t bad and finally I finished something. Plus it was nice after we got the dresser upstairs I looked at Jedd and said “see I showed you, I can refinish a dresser and it looks really good”.