Before -Small chest of drawers

I recently went to Maine with my Mom and Sister to find some new inventory.  There will be another post sharing photos of some of my finds. My Mom found this cute little chest of drawers.  It was in good condition and was really well built.  The only issue is that it was sealed with a coat of shiny polyurethane and it gave the wood an orange tint. Like a bad spray tan.

Nonetheless, because the chest of drawers was such good quality, I decided to take it home and give it a makeover.

My first thought was to strip in back to the original woods and leave it in a raw wood finished but sealed with wax.  However, the more I thought about it, I realized that stripping the drawers was going to be very labor intensive.  See how each drawer is framed with molding? Getting all the orange polyurethane off of the corners and crevices would have been a serious challenge.

 

 

So, I decided to paint the entire piece of furniture with milk paint.

First, I cleaned it really well using krud kutter.  I also removed all the drawers and cleaned the interior of the chest of drawers.  If you look at the photo below, you can see that this piece of furniture is well made. It is built using solid wood.

 

 

As an aside, I am so happy to be working outside again.  It was such a joy to work outside in the garage and driveway. The weather is finally warming up and I took full advantage of it.

Here is a photo of the interior of the unit before I cleaned it. It was pretty filthy.

 

 

After I cleaned the chest of drawers, I gave every thing a light sanding.  It’s my feeling that giving everything a light sanding makes it feel cleaner.   I also removed all of the wooden knobs and gave them a good cleaning and sanding.

Check back here in a week or so and I will share the “After” version of this piece of furniture.

Thank you for stopping by the blog today, I hope the weather is just as nice where you live.