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Before and After: Grey and Gold Painted Vintage Dresser

I know it’s been a while since I’ve posted a painted dresser makeover, but the honest truth is that I haven’t had any projects! I’d be looking for one to work on every week with no luck, sure there were lots of very expensive dressers, solid teak cabinets etc, but my focus is to bring new life to vintage plywood dressers that I don’t feel guilty painting. Plus it just feels great to make something ugly beautiful again.

Here’s what I recently got my hands on, it’s a simple 6 drawer plywood and particle board dresser, nothing fancy really, but better than nothing! My neighbour was getting rid of it and all I had to do was wheel it into my apartment and it was mine.red painted dresser before and after
I had to save this dresser! I couldn’t let this badly worn red paint live this way in someones home. It needed a makeover, even if it wasn’t perfect, just something simple to freshen it up. A few coats of white paint and some new hardware would do the trick. The drawers were in really rough shape and so was the top surface, I did what I could to fix it, but even after patching it and sanding, it’s still pretty rough, but the fresh coats of paint really helps.Read More »Before and After: Grey and Gold Painted Vintage Dresser

painted vintage mid century modern sideboard before and after

Before and After: Painted Vintage Sideboard

This past Summer Andrew and I found this awesome solid plywood vintage sideboard, credenza, mid century modern cabinet (whatever you want to call it). I finally took some photos of it to share here and can’t wait to finally sell it….or keep it…

It weights a ton and if you could have seen how we got it home you would of had a good laugh, lets just say thank goodness we didn’t live too far from where we found it!

Here’s the before photos of this vintage sideboard:

vintage sideboard before and after

Here’s some close ups of all the ugly laminate that was broken and peeling off. Those legs though…
You have no idea how good it felt to remove all the loose bits of laminate!

vintage credenza before and after

Read More »Before and After: Painted Vintage Sideboard

painted vintage furniture before and after

Before and After: Mid-Century Asymmetrical Dresser

This mid-century modern dresser was picked up a few weeks ago at a Summer yard sale for a steal. It sat in our living room for a while until we finished a few other projects and figured out what we were going to do to it. It originally came with 2 mirrors that had broken frames, were bulky and weighed a ton. Luckily we managed to sell the beveled mirrors and made back our money on the dresser purchase! Who knew there was a market for vintage beveled mirror.

mid century modern dresser

I am totally in love with the lines of this mid-century piece, the asymmetrical design has so much character and allows for displaying books or plants in a unique way.

The surface of the entire piece was in horrible condition, scratches, water damage and missing trim. Very little wood veneer was salvageable, so we sanded it all down, patched and filled all the areas that needed it and primed it with CIL Smart3 primer. The knobs and pulls were super cool, but also in rough shape with the white enamel coming off and the brass peeling badly.

mid century modern dresser
mid century modern before and after

A top coat was applied in high-gloss Benjamin Moore Advance. The drawer fronts are Mantis Green and the body is Snowfall White. The legs and wood trim were sanded down and stained with danish oil in light walnut to add some contrast to all the white. Lastly, the hardware and feet were primed and painted with metallic copper spray paint.

Check out the final results:
Read More »Before and After: Mid-Century Asymmetrical Dresser

vintage night stand

Before and After: Vintage Night Stand

A while back I refinished a junky white box into a modern mid century style night stand. I ended up keeping it for myself. Ever since then, Andrew has been looking for a vintage night stand to match mine. You could say he had night stand envy.

Here’s the piece we were matching it with, you can read more about this before and after over here

vintage mid century modern cabinet

So we were on the lookout for something that had similar bones. We recently found this little guy:

vintage night stand before and after

This piece was frumpy, especially with that hardware, super short legs and cream paint. We wanted to give it a modern facelift. Right away we ripped off the drawer front, because we knew it was plywood and we wanted a nice wood front to match the other project I did. We went to the hardware store and got them to cut a piece of 1/4 inch maple veneer to size. If you ask your local hardware store very nicely, they won’t charge you for cuts. Well at least that’s what the awesome guys at Windsor Plywood did for us! I think it was because I smiled ever so nicely at the guy. It only cost about $13 for the drawer front and we have so much leftover wood for another project, but I’ve already decided I’m going to keep the thin sheet of veneer to use as a photo backdrop for now.

We brought it home and glued and clamped it to the drawer face. We just used regular wood glue and heavy duty clamps. It sat clamped for about a day. Once it was dry we applied several coats of danish oil and drilled holes for a modern drawer pull.

wood veneer drawers

You’ll also notice we switched out the legs to give it more height so it would work better as a night stand and so it matched the other piece I did. You can find legs like this at Home Depot, but we got ours at a garage sale for pretty much nothing.

The entire piece was primed using CIL Smart3 Primer and the final coat was Benjamin Moore Advance in Tropicana Cabana and Snowfall White.

Here’s the final result of our modern vintage night stand:
Read More »Before and After: Vintage Night Stand