Flipping Furniture

This is a different type of post from my typical entries, but still in the line of being a Conscientious Consumer.  Flipping furniture; it's not a euphemism for me cursing at a dresser, it refers to taking an older piece of furniture and turning it into exactly what you want.  I recently did this with a dresser for my daughter.  We thought it wouldn't be difficult to find her a new dresser at any furniture store.  I was wrong, at least if we didn't want to spend a lot of money. Well made dressers were super expensive and less expensive dressers were cheaply made and still around $500.  But we kept on looking. 

Then I started looking on craigslist.  Nothing older was exactly what we were looking for.  I toyed with the idea of refinishing something.  My criteria though would be that the dresser had to be a super deal for me to put that much work into it and then if I failed it wouldn't be a huge loss.  I found a local listing for a few dressers that might fit the bill and my daughter got on board with the idea, super excited that she could pick a color for the dresser.  The dresser we ended up with was listed for $75 and we paid $50 for it.  It wasn't super high quality but it wasn't junk either.

The dresser in it's original state.

Don't get me wrong, there was A LOT of labor involved, all pretty easy and simple steps, but a lot of steps.   But I love a deal so much and creating something special for my daughter felt good. 

• First I removed all the old handles and cleaned the dresser.  It was very dirty. 
• I filled in the old drawer handle holes with wood filler because we were switching to knobs. Then I sanded it lightly to rough up the surface to accept paint.  Tip - if you are doing this a power palm sander comes in handy and saves a lot of time.  There was an area on top that had to really be sanded because of a think layer of grime.  But I knew good preparation would pay off in the end. 
• Then I wiped it down again to make sure all the fine dust was off.  It was finally ready for paint.  I used Behr premium plus ultra paint plus primer in one in a semi-gloss.  My daughter decided on coral for the color.  I wasn't too sure about such a bright color, but I thought if we put some paint on it and totally hated it we could always go with a different color for the second coat. 
• Another light sanding in between coats of paint and then a final second coat. 
• Once it was all dry, I finished it off with a coat of wax and then my husband installed the new knobs. 

This is the final product what do you think?


The finished (or refinished) dresser.

My daughter LOVES it, even though she wasn't sure about the paint color after the first coat.  But it looked a lot different with the second coat and then the drawers put back in. 

How much did I spend?  About $150 in all.  $50 for the dresser then another $100 for the new knobs (about $3 each), paint, wood filler, wax, paint brushes and sand paper.  The cheapest dresser was about $500 so we can safely say I saved about $350, plus sales tax.  That feels really good.  I was exhausted when I finished, but warning it is highly addictive.  I can't wait to start another project like this!

Any questions I can answer about this?  Please comment below and I would be happy to answer!