Chest of Drawers Makeover
I was lucky enough to get this little oak chest of drawers on freecycle. This means it is totally free. I just had to collect it.
It was rather tired, grubby, a little bit mouldy smelling and had mismatched handles. All the handles were pretty ropey and needed replacing. However, the problem with that was that they were two hole handles so if I wanted to just strip and wax and keep the wood drawer fronts, I would need to find handles the same size which I thought would be problematic.
To get rid of the mouldy smell, I left the drawers out in the sunshine for a few days. This was during and after painting the fronts. I found this remedy online. It worked ok.
I decided to fill in the handle holes and paint the drawer fronts and strip and wax the rest of the chest to show the beautiful oak wood.
Here are the drawers, all filled and sanded back.
I then painted them all and used 4 different colours. Paint here in Australia is really really expensive. I bought a 2 litre pot of my favourite colour, dulux green buoy in water based gloss and it was over $50!! This shocked me, so I use that colour for pretty much everything. Here I mixed it with white and did the largest drawer in it. The two little ones are water based white gloss with a mixer pot which is blue mixed in and the other two are paler versions of the green buoy. This meant I didn't buy any new paint for this project.
Then I sanded and waxed the rest of the chest and it came up beautifully! I love the wood grain.
from pinterest
I thought about what knobs to use. For a while I was planning on using knotted ropes as I didn't want to spend money on knobs. But I would have had to have buy the rope. I thought it would be hard to open the drawers. Then I bought some porcelain door handles on gumtree. For $20 I got 12 porcelain gainsborough door handles with 2 privacy sets and 7 cupboard door handles to match - exactly what I needed for this chest! So I used these.
And here it is! I am so pleased with it because it is a beautiful oak piece of furniture and it was free and unloved before. Now we will keep and use this for many years to come. That makes me feel good!
Nice job, it looks lovely. I love finding things to use also. fun!
ReplyDeletehi Marianne, I've just also found free cycle but haven't picked up any good pieces yet. I love how you've done the different coloured drawers and the wood grain is very beautiful. thanks for linking up to Paint Parade. Fiona x
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