Early 1900's oak dresser restoration.

After seeing bogieb 's stair project, I figured would post up my latest project too.

We bought this dresser last year for about $10 at a yard sale up the street from us. We needed a TV stand in the living room and this was the right width and height. The drawers give plenty of storage too.

This past weekend was windy, rainy and snowy, so it was time to get this restored. For the record, I pretty much want furniture kept in the original finish. I saw a FB post that inspired me to try chalk paint. I've see pieces done and never really liked it, but the post absolutely blew me away.

I set this project up in the kitchen and got to it.

All drawers were removed, tightened up and handles taken off.

Before. Not terrible, but all the drawers were catching and several layers of the old finish took away the look of it.





The old pulls with the shadow of earlier brass plate pulls. All the wood keyhole plates were in great shape. A lot of the wood is quarter sawn oak.




So basically I painted charcoal chalk paint on the drawer dividers and rails and stiles on the sides. The drawer fronts and side panel good a bit of the original finish re-worked and two coats of semi-gloss poly.

The current handles went back on.

Finished. Same drawer pictured above






The top left drawer had a little finish issue to begin with, but I did not want to go remove it all and try to match the stain to the rest of the piece.

All in all, I am 95% happy with it. We had some different antique pulls lined up on FB market, but the seller never got back after pick up arrangements were about made. I am hoping to pass this along to the kids someday and get another 100 years out of this piece.

I like how the chalk paint offsets the natural grain.



Different lighting.

 

Looks great.

 

Nice job Jon! Looks great. I love quarter sawn white oak..

You got that looking great without removing all the finish and sanding.

I'm guessing the chalk paint advantage is that it's super low gloss?

 

Yes, matte finish and priming not really required. It does need a protective coat over it. I have some satin poly that I'll put on this weekend.

 

When you mentioned the chalk paint, I imagined you painted over the whole thing and groaned a bit in my mind. But what you did was a superb job of using a little paint to offset the main piece. That is beautiful.

Trying to custom match a stain for that one drawer would have been incredibly difficult. so I think you were right in leaving it. Plus it tends to draw the eye so you look more closely at the entire piece.

 

I was never crazy about full painting of furniture with chalk paint either.

 

Scotty Overkill , your wife's FB post was the reason I did this. I was absolutely blown away with her work. We had one of those Governor Winthrop desks, but did not have space for it. She did an incredible job on it, and please thank her for posting the pics.