It takes creativity and resourcefulness to pull off an old furniture restoration, especially if you’re trying to make it look brand new again.
This dresser’s facelift has people in awe.
A craftsman stumbled onto a great find in the form of an old, rugged dresser. It looked like trash, but he saw gold.
Then he found the perfect trim.
He spotted a dingy old set of wooden blinds. Both were found on Facebook Marketplace for free.
Jay Zaluski has a passion for furniture restoration, makeovers, and DIY. His YouTube channel, Flippingdrawers, features him covering DIY projects.
Restoring furniture isn’t necessarily “easy”.
The veneers that covered the dresser were already peeling off, and there was damage to some areas of the wood that needed repairs.
He started off by removing the handles. Then, one by one, he removed the drawers.
The top coat was stuck.
And even scraping and sanding did not remove it. So Jay tried using a paint stripper.
It took him more than 2 variants of paint strippers to almost fully remove the coat. Some parts were too damaged, so they were replaced.
Next up, he removed the damaged veneer from the drawers, which to his surprise were easily removed.
Then he sanded the drawers smooth inside and out and prepared them for staining.
He made retouches on the damaged edges and areas of the dresser with wood glue.
He went back to the dresser’s frame to remove the top coat using a sandblaster.
For whatever reason, he struggled to try to fully remove the top coat but was still able to remove almost all of it.
It’s definitely a labor of love.
The legs were too simple to his liking, so Jay also removed the wooden legs which would be replaced with copper ones.
They were easily removed so there was no worry about damaging the main body. He added a few more wood pieces to make the frame sturdy and stronger.
Then his creativity kicked in.
He took the wooden blinds from Marketplace and used each piece to cover the surfaces where the veneers were before.
It’s like they were made for it.
Since the wooden blinds were thin, it was easy for him to bend to contour some areas.
He cut them into specified lengths to cover the front of the drawers and sides of the dresser.
To match the color of the blinds to the existing wood from the original dresser, Jay used wood dye and sprayed them before attaching the new hardware.
Then, he covered it in beeswax.
Jay coated it in wax for wood polishing and conditioning. He then replaced the mirror in the dresser and made some finishing touches to it.
The final results are amazing.
Jay was able to transform an old, rugged, and worn-out dresser into a new one with a touch of his own.
His work was truly amazing. No wonder many people were impressed and commended for what he has done.
See how Jay takes this dresser from drab to fab in the video below!
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