My favorite furniture pieces in our house are the family pieces that have been passed down from one generation to the next.
The dresser I’m sharing today, came from my husband’s Grandparent’s farmhouse and has been in the family for many years. I refinished it for my daughter two summers ago. I’m very proud of how it turned out and she’s very happy to have something that belonged to her Grandmother!
When the farm was sold a couple of years ago and the family cleaned everything out, this dresser was still sitting in an upstairs room. No one else wanted it. It needed work and was missing hardware, but I thought it was worth trying to restore. It was unique and had such pretty detail.
When I finally got around to working on it, I started by stripping the entire surface with CitriStrip. I had no idea what this step would take before I began! I had to apply it a few times and take a nylon brush to the detailed scrolls at the top of the mirror frame. Not only did I have the old finish to remove, but the dresser is around seventy years old and was in a house with a wood stove. There was a lot of build-up.
*Be sure to wear protective gear, such as a mask, safety glasses, gloves, etc., when using furniture stripper. And carefully follow instructions on container.*
The old finish was slowly coming off and had the consistency of chocolate sauce! The wood beneath was beautiful.
You can see I worked into the night. What a job this was!
The detail on the mirror frame was the hardest to strip. The old finish with the CitriStrip was coming off very thick and I had to clean out the brush a lot, using mineral spirits.
I got the remaining residue off using Mineral Spirits and course sponges, made for furniture stripping. I went through a lot of them because the hand scraper couldn’t get it all. This step is a must because the mineral spirits thin the residue and is the best for cleaning off the surface.
After the dresser was stripped, I went over the hard-to-reach areas with 80-grit sandpaper. I smoothed the entire surface with a 220-grit sandpaper. I had to do this step by hand because a sander would have left imperfections with all the detail and curves in the dresser.
Cleaning furniture with bleach water is always a good idea, especially if it’s old and possibly exposed to mold. I cleaned the inside and outside with bleach water because it was sitting in that house for a long time and had some visible mildew in the drawer bottoms.
I considered leaving the bare wood and just applying polyurethane but I noticed the wood pieces didn’t match up. So I tested different stain colors.
My Uncle once taught me about something called “Friday wood” He said that furniture companies/builders would use the different pieces of wood they had leftover on Fridays and build one piece with them. Then they would coat them in a dark stain to make it look like one uniform piece. Isn’t that interesting?
The drawer fronts were different and the tops and sides were not the same wood. I don’t know if this was some “Friday” piece but I could see it was stained dark to cover the two different types of wood. That’s the reason I decided to apply a wood stain, but wanted to keep it lighter than before.
I went with Minwax’s Golden Pecan Wood Finish stain. It was a much lighter color but dark enough to make it look uniform, again. The golden pecan gave it a beautiful honey color!
For the protective finish, I used Minwax’s Fast-Drying Polyurethane. I hadn’t used the fast-drying finish before but I was happy with the results! I did two coats, lightly sanding with 220-grit sandpaper in between. It’s really smooth and the surface shines!
I tried to clean and restore the original pulls but when I cleaned them, they were two different colors. The backplates were gold and the handles were pewter, which really didn’t look good with the lighter stain. I found these pulls which had a classic look and finish- perfect for this antique dresser!
I thought I’d go back one more time to see how it looked before…
The dresser is now in our daughter’s bedroom and she is so happy because it was her Mimi’s, and they’re very close. I know she will cherish it and hopefully will keep it in the family.
The surface is so smooth and shiny. I love that you can see the wood grain, now!
I can still see some imperfections but it’s to be expected with an antique dresser. That’s what gives it character!
After I bleached the dresser drawers, I primed the bottoms and lined them with a peel-and-stick contact paper. The dresser is in my daughter’s room with her clothes inside of it, so I didn’t want to take that chance after I had cleaned the mildew. This gave her a fresh surface to store her clothes- especially her cool sock collection!
I hope she will enjoy this dresser for years to come! She loves that she has something that once belonged to her Mimi. Mimi was so happy with how it turned out and couldn’t believe it was the same dresser!