We were a couple months out from our first-born making her debut appearance and needed furniture for her bedroom. We did what anyone who lives paycheck to paycheck does in that situation – go thrift shopping!
I wish I had gotten a picture of this piece prior to starting any of the work. I guess hindsight is 50/50, as Pat Dye would say… or Cam Newton, for that matter. The reason why is because the change in just sanding the top down was amazing. The entire piece was literally spray-painted black – including the top. You can see that the middle small drawer face was broken off and painted over. The top drawer was also broken and two of the long drawers were missing all hardware. By instinct, I just started sanding the top and realized there was a decent looking piece of wood under there. Booyah!
After finding that little glimmer of hope, I decided not to press my luck and try to sand the entire piece down to the natural finish. Instead, I built three new drawer faces for the middle drawers with the help of my grandfather, Herb Rader (aka Pop-Pop). He had a router and I didn’t. I decided to reuse the old original hardware on the middle column of drawers. My wife came up with the idea of putting some glass knobs on it and painting it a really cool greenish-blue to match. Five years and two more children later, it still looks great.
