The 80's are calling and they want their furniture back...

Just to clarify...this was NOT me in the 80's.

Remember the 80's? They were covered in big hair and oak furniture with rounded edges. I had my share of it (the oak, not the hair), but I updated my furniture look as the decades wore on (unfortunately, I first took a detour into that misguided Santa Fe look...) However, there are a LOT of people out there who are just getting around to realizing the 80's are now long gone, so Craigslist is teeming with all sorts of 80's oak furniture.


Our master bedroom needed a couple of dressers - but good quality dressers are EXPENSIVE. Oh, sure you can pick up a new one for a few hundred bucks, but it's going to be crap. I really didn't want to spend a minimum of $600 for 1 halfway decent dresser and since I needed 2, well, $1200 was not in the budget just for a place to store mismatched socks and sweaters.

I knew that I was going to have a bit of a challenge finding them on Craigslist since I was hoping to find 2 identical dressers to fill up one of the walls in our bedroom. But after searching for a couple of weeks, a new posting popped up that looked to be perfect: two large identical oak dressers.  The owners were asking $175 each and wouldn't budge since they had already gotten a ton of calls on them. Other people knew a good deal when they saw it, too! But I braved a snowy night and got there first...
These dressers were solid wood, made by a well known furniture manufacturer, and in perfect condition. And, no fussy hardware. SOLD!

I was SO excited to start on my project to transform these that I neglected to take a "before" photo, but here's an almost identical dresser that I just saw posted on CL to give you an idea of what they looked like.

First, I gave the dressers a light sanding, primed them, then painted them with a chocolate brown semigloss latex paint from Behr.  I wanted the paint to really cure so even after they were dry I didn't put anything on the top of them for another week. I added some brushed aluminum pulls, too, to update their look which I found for only a couple of dollars apiece at Lowe's (critical, since I needed 18 of them).

Here's the finished product. I'm already thinking of repainting them since I've got the bug to redecorate the bedroom again and change my color scheme (see Bedroom Refresh post).

What I learned from this project:

1. There can be a big difference in prices among the big box stores on hardware, so compare prices.
2. Even when paint seems completely dry, it still needs more time to fully cure so items won't stick to the surface.
3. Using a mini roller sure beats using a brush.
4. Having a dresser of my own...is still not enough space for my stuff.