Secondhand dresser revamp

Buying secondhand furniture is a great way to find those old pieces that you can work magic with. A little sanding and touch up here and there, a coat of Rust-Oleum 2X spray paint, and you have a beautifully revamped piece of furniture for your home.

 

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Julie at simple redesign wanted to transform this secondhand cabinet into a stylish piece for her home. She began by removing the back to get to the inside. It's easy to have a piece of 3mm masonite backing board cut to size to replace the one you remove - if you can't remove it in one piece.

For the purpose of this redesign, the top drawers were being left out to create an open shelf at the top of the unit. This means that a piece of 6mm plywood (or SupaWood) needed to be fitted as a shelf base for the open section. The easiest way to do this is to cut the board to the exact length and width of the space and then insert to mark for any cutouts that need to be done... in this case for the upright supports at the front of the cabinet.

Because the front edge of the new shelf will be visible, a layer of wood filler was smoothed over the edge, left to dry and then sanded smooth.

Here you can see how the new shelf fitted snugly in place above the drawers. The new shelf was only installed after prepping and finishing the cabinet and shelf - it's easier that way. Everything needed to be sanded with 120-grit and then 240-grit sandpaper. If there are any defect - you can fill these in with wood filler, let dry and sand.

After wiping clean, the cabinet was taken outdoors and given two coats of Rust-Oleum 2X -gloss key lime.

After it was all sprayed and dry, the backing board was nailed in place with small panel pins.