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Referbished: The Dresser That Wouldn't Die

Nesting is a real thing.  With four weeks left until the arrival of my first baby boy, I have been anxiously engaged in preparing my house for his arrival.  Part of this has included reorganizing ALL THE THINGS and fixing up his room, which would be called "the nursery" if you were someone other than me.  Random craft projects have been abundant around my house lately, mostly to distract me from essential to-do's like cleaning and organizing, but slowly I'm beginning to prioritize those less desirable tasks and things are starting to come together.  My procrastination of the last month has started to really catch up with me, though. 

One of the more fun projects that I tackled lately is refurbishing an old dresser of mine into a changing table/dresser for the boy.  When I first moved to Washington DC, I didn't own anything that couldn't fit inside my Honda Accord, so I found all my furniture on the side of the road, including this hideous dresser.  Yes, its that awkward moment when you see a neighbor in your complex/neighborhood put an ugly, broken down piece of furniture on the curb for the garbage man because its not worth the effort to even post it on Freecyle, and you sneak out of your house at just the right streets-appear-to-be-vacant moment, grab that awful discarded piece of junk and whisk it into your house before anyone sees you picking through your neighbor's trash.  SCORE!

I spray painted it white when I first got it, fully intending to paint it some cool, funky color, but never got around to it.  So, these 5 years later, instead of putting it back on the curb for some other cheapskate, I decided to be even cheaper and just give the ol' thing a facelift.

 I removed the 3 drawers on the left, intending to transform that space into cubbies.  One of the drawers on that side was broken anyway.

 Unfortunately, the tops of those small drawers on the top row (except the one on the far right) are broken, leaving a 1/2 inch gap.  After I sanded them down, it bothered me less, but it isn't ideal.

 Using an electric palm sander, I sanded the crap out of the whole thing. 

 I removed all of the knobs from the drawers and used their screws to secure them to this piece of cardboard to make them easy to paint with no mess. 

 After I sanded the front of all the drawers until they were butter smooth, I painted them.

I used some old masonite panels I had unsuccessfully used as canvases in my college oil painting class to create the floor and sides of the cubbies.  I painted them before I installed them, but ended up putting on another coat when I painted the entire dresser.

I used 3/4 of a quart of satin latex paint (paint/primer in one), and covered the entire dresser in two coats.  The color didn't turn out quite like I expected from the sample, but it grew on me. 

We're getting ready to welcome this little guy into our family, one task at a time.  Now, if we could only decide on a name!