HOME | Chest of drawers restoration

Chest of drawers restoration

While aimlessly scrolling Facebook Marketplace at the start of this year for older timber furniture I came across a chest of drawers for $150 which I know is cheaper than a lot of mass produced furniture out there but it was also a beautiful piece of furniture. I didn’t end up buying it because I was worried about where I would store it and what I would do with it…rookie mistake I won’t be making again! So when I saw another chest of drawers come up on Gumtree for $50 I jumped on it thinking I could learn how to sand and refinish it as a present for a friends 30th.

With the help of all my new pals at the hardware store this is what I found out…

1 | Sourcing furniture - older timber furniture from around my Grandparent’s era doesn’t seem to be in demand as I think it should be. There are so many listings on Facebook marketplace, Gumtree and EBay for beautiful timber tables, chest of drawers and chairs that with a little bit of love could be brought back to life. What I love about this kind of furniture is that it is made of mostly solid timber (with some parts of plywood) but it doesn’t have any of the plastic coated particleboard (MDF) that doesn’t last as long. There is also so much more character in pieces of furniture that might have decorative handles or turned leg details.

I found it was useful to look for something that wasn’t too run down (ie. all the drawers ran smoothly and there were no missing pieces of timber) so I didn’t need to do repair work before I started. There is a lot of furniture out there with very yellow varnish that has beautiful timber underneath like this one I refinished.

2 | Tools + materials - time for a trip to the toy shop (A.K.A Bunnings)! I knew from some rough Youtube research that I needed to be able to strip the existing varnish of the chest of drawers, sand it back, putty any holes and re-varnish the timber to finish it off. All the people working at Bunnings are only too happy to share what they know and help you find what you are looking for so when I get asked “Can I help you?”, I now always say “absolutely!” so I don’t spend hours in the aisles guessing what I need. I am now the proud owner of a Ryobi orbital sander, putty, a range or sand papers, new brushes and varnish.

3 | Varnish stripping - instead of using the potent paint stripper that would probably strip everything else around you including your nose hairs I found a water based gel paint and varnish stripper which went on with the consistency of Clag glue and did the job on the existing varnish when I scraped it off.

4 | Sanding - I had to repeat the paint and varnish stripping process twice but once most of the varnish had been removed I got to use my new power tool. Starting with the courser sanding pads and moving my way onto the finer

5 | New varnish - the natural timber on the chest of drawers was a beautiful colour so I wanted a new varnish that would protect the timber without changing the colour too much. I found a one coat product from British Paints that was also water based (meaning the clean up time wouldn't be as messy).

There is something very satisfying about creating something by hand and being able to give it to someone as a present and I hope it will be something that will be kept for a long time.

This idea of taking the old and bringing into the new is quickly taking a hold with people who are looking to inject some history and nostalgia into their homes. So much so that there is a new style emerging called, the Grandmillenial style.

Unfortunately what this means now is I have a new addiction to Facebook Marketplace and I came home from Sydney with a ute load of more furniture… watch this space.

Before - some of these older pieces of furniture have newer additions to them like the mirror with decorative side pieces. I wanted to take it back to the simplest form and also remove the yellower coloured varnish that was popular. The chest of drawers is now as close to the colour of it’s actual timber and all the marks and grooves only adds to the character of it.