Vintage dresser - before and after

Who would have guessed that this would turn out to be so easy-peasy? From bedroom dressing table to living room drinks cabinet, and all done in a few days with no dramas at all.

Here's what my eBay bargain looked like before:



The photo doesn't show just how bad the finish was. Numerous coats of shellac had bubbled and peeled or been scratched away. And those handles - ugh. You already know the saga of the unorthodox mirror removal method, so I'll skip that.

Sanding was pretty easy, the old finish came off with no probs. Except around those pretty curvey carved bits.



Some chemical paint stripper helped, but in the end I decided not to be a perfectionist about it. There was also this to deal with:



Mmm. Lovely 70s brown and mustard Contact, firmly stuck down to the drawer bottoms. I tried to peel it off one drawer and ended up with broken off pieces and gunky sticky crap still on the drawer base. Then I had a brainwave - my craft heat gun might do the trick! It did; that nasty stuff just peeled away.

Next I gave her two coats of walnut stain, left over from the chair...



...some satin poly...


...and she was looking just gorgeous. Then I added some new teardrop pulls, which is what the original handles would have been:


Look at that gorgeous cedar!



Sorry about the flash glare. I must fiddle around with my camera settings and perfect the art of indoor photography sans flash. One of these days.

I've just thrown some "stuff" on the top, but this is the general idea for our drinks cabinet. The grog we most often use is on top, and the rest stashed underneath. The basket is temporary - I have a plan for a vintage crate to hold the extra bottles, but that's a whole other story.



This is another bargain I picked up this week - a silverplate footed dish from an antique/secondhand shop near my office. The classic and so-heavy-it-would-break-your-wrist decanter behind it was a wedding gift.



My $2 Shop tray is doing a brilliant job of keeping the bottles and glasses tidy. It was white with a horrible butterflies and flowers print on the bottom, complete with corny poem, but a quick spray with black paint and a coat of wipe-on polyurethane sealer fixed that.



And inside the drawers? No putrid Contact anymore, just a wine rack I found at K Mart, plus a shallow basket to hold corkscrews, openers and assorted bits and pieces.



Happy? You bet.


I'm linking this post to Miss Mustard Seed's Furniture Feature Friday