You, Me, and Dupree: The Darn Dresser

Happy Friday everybody! Every once in a while I need to blog about something other than our trip to Europe- so here you have it... that darn dresser! You all remember the dresser I started working on ions ago?? Yes I first posted about this dresser back in July! Well we have SLOWLY but SURELY been working on it and it is finally done!

This was my sister-in-law's childhood dresser that lived in her basement for some years and when she said it needed a new home, I thought we could take it. It then sat in my basement for about a year until I decided what I wanted to do with it. I decided to strip it, sand it, put new hardware on it, and put it upstairs in what we call the "one day baby" room. Sounds easy and simple right?!

Well stripping the stain from the dresser was issue #1. It was far more work than I ever imagined! Doing this project on the weekends, in the backyard (where the sun beats down) in the summer was awful! It was so hot that I could only do one drawer at a time and then I'd have to come in for a break. I felt ridiculous! Once the drawers were finished, sanding the top of the dresser wasn't all that bad but the side- oh my gosh! To apply pressure to the side of something is not easy- my little muscles struggled!

Ryan bought some varnish remover and although helpful, I'm certain I lost a few brain cells from that ordeal. The varnish remover was key to getting in those little cracks and details that a sander could not work in to.

After we were done sanding and removing all stain, we were able to stain. We had picked out the stain MONTHS ago so I was really excited to see it finally on the dresser. What we thought was a gray was really black. I mean, you couldn't even see a spec of gray in that stain. And so we have a black dresser. It's totally fine as all the other bedroom furniture in our house is black but gray would have been nice too. :)

And then the hardware. Again this was picked out MONTHS ago- same day we bought the stain. We went to Home Depot bought some nice bronze knobs but when we brought them home, they didn't fit the holes on the drawers. So my sweet husband knew that what I really wanted were knobs from Anthropology that would be adorable and fun for a kid! We took almost an hour picking out these knobs! Nothing could be gender specific and I had to remember that Ryan had to like them too- so the beautiful, frilly flowers were out and anything girly was a no go! Funny side note- when we bought the knobs, the girl checking us out asked if we were expecting a baby and of course we said no! She was beyond confused as to why we were picking out furniture things for a "nursery" we didn't even have a baby coming for. HAHA!

ANYWAYS- so without further to do... here she is! That darn dresser!