Dresser Redo

A long long time ago (February)  I found a dresser on KSL, which is sort of like craigslist, and I sent my husband to pick it up.  I saw it online and said "25 bucks?"  I immediately fell in love with it.  It was a huge dresser with clean lines and perfect for us to use as a TV stand once we acquired a flat panel TV.  I couldn't wait for Andrew to pick it up.  You have to be quick about cheap stuff, so he went and bought it as soon as he could.  He picked it up in a truck that we were renting (long unrelated story) and as he turned the first corner coming home two of the drawers flew out of the truck and crashed on the ground.  It wasn't a hard fix, but when he brought that sucker home I noticed two things.  1.  The broken drawers and 2. It was really ugly.  What had happened to my clean lines?  I had big plans for this beast and it wasn't what I thought it was at all.  So it sat in my garage FOREVER while I sorted through my feelings about the piece of crap.  Then the looming reality of getting a second car and having no where to put it sunk in and I started pondering what to do with it.  People always ask me if it's hard to refinish furniture and they never seem to believe me when I say no, so if you are one of those people who are daunted by the thought of refinishing something read this step by step of this dresser redo (sorry no pics).

1. Fix the drawers - I just stapled them back together.
2. Sand everything - I use my Ryobi Sander which I love.
3. Prime everything- I'm not super picky about primer.  Usually I'll just go to Walmart and pick up a can if I specifically need primer, but where I'm really picky is paint.  I LOVE LOVE LOVE  Behr paint.  I think it is by far the best and I have tried a lot of paint.
4. spray hardware - I used Rustoleum Oiled Bronze spray paint.  LOVE this stuff!  One of the hardware pieces was broken, so I planned on getting pulls to replace the top four pieces of hardware.
5.  Sat and stared at it for a while wondering what color to paint it and what I was going to do with it.
6. Decided on and painted it off white since almost every piece of furniture in my house is off white.  I figured I would find something to do with it.
7. Distressed it with my sander
8. Polyurethane coats - I use Minwax fast drying polyurethane because it is perfect for the impatient crafter.  ie: me
9. Then I was kind of liking it and thinking it would look good in my bedroom
10.  I went to home depot to pick up some pulls and track pieces for it.
11. Came home and realized that the track pieces were wrong and the pulls wouldn't fit.  ALWAYS TAKE THE OLD HARDWARE IN!  Most hardware these days are pretty standard, but back in the day things were not so standard, so the holes for the hardware in this dresser were WAY farther apart than the standard of today's hardware.
12.  Go back to home depot, buy the cheapest knobs I can find that will coordinate with my dresser and new tracks.
13.  Put tracks on and spray the cheap hardware.
14. Fill old holes with wood putty.
15. Sand and paint over those holes
16. Drill new holes and put hardware in.
17. Decide this dresser is not for me and put it up for sale on KSL and Craigslist

Luckily I found the perfect new owners for this beast and they loved it and were impressed with my mad refinishing skills.  ;)