Wednesday, February 20, 2013

Dashing Dresser

This is a project that is nearly a year old. Digging up the "before" picture brought me back to April, 2012.

This dresser belonged to my husband when we was a little boy. I'm told that my mother-in-law spent weeks finding the perfect shade of purple to match the little trucks that were in the wallpaper she used to decorate his room. I know... purple seems like a pretty unique choice for a little boy, but it was the 80's... things were crazy.



Before it was Dan's, it belonged to his father and his Grandmother. When I looked at the bare wood inside the drawers, I really wanted to strip all the paint and let the original grain show. However, after I got past the purple, then the blue, then the faux technique, I gave up. The dresser was painted white.


Over the years, the keyhole had also been painted over. This was especially maddening to me, because I love the contrast that a shiny keyhole creates. I scraped away at the paint for a long time before I got to this point.


I even painted the inside of the drawers and lined them with shelf paper!


And then it was time to replace the knobs. I wanted something a little bit different than the typical glass knobs I've been seeing everywhere. Actually, I wanted pulls instead of knobs... which was funny because when I looked inside the drawers, I noticed 2 holes that had been filled where the pulls used to be screwed in. Ah, time... it changes everything and then changes it right back.

But at this point, nearly 3 months had gone by since I sanded down the ole' boy, and I was no longer interested in filling and re-painting. So I began searching for knobs on e-bay.... Well, I went to e-bay after I figured out that the anthropology knobs would cost me roughly $100.

$100 knobs for a free dresser? I don't think so.

This is where things got a little tricky.

I found these bluish grey knobs that I loved... and, they had gold hardware, which would match the keyhole. They were offered by a British seller, but once you converted pounds to dollars, the price was a little over $3 a knob, and about $9 to ship. JACKPOT. So I bought 10.

As is turns out... that was $9 PER KNOB. I panicked.

"Think Sanborn... think! I mean Sadlon - think Sadlon, think!"

And then I got this genius idea to have the knobs shipped the only person in England I know, Mark Beisley, a co-worker of my father-in-law. "If I can ship them to him, surely the price will be less. He comes over here all the time so he can just pack them in his suitcase for me." So I asked Mark and he agreed, as did the ebay seller.

When Mark received the knobs in the mail he asked me if I wanted to have them shipped to Andy through the company. It sounded a bit sketchy to use company funds to pay for my knobs... and while it does seem like something I might do, I didn't really think it was fair to ask father-in-law to be sketchy on my behalf. So I told Mark "just bring them over next time you come, there's no rush."

A week or so later, father-in-law handed me the knobs and let me know that it has cost $70 to ship them from England to here.

Panic, round 2.

But then he assured me he was just kidding, that Mark had actually come over to the states that week and brought the knobs in his bag. WHEW. They ended up costing about $5.50 per knob when all was said and done.

Except that then the hardware was silver! Drat! So I bought some gold paint and just hand painted all the screws and the little plates. Ugh.


Not too long after all of that, I found the mirror on craigslist for $20. It came home, got a nice coat of white paint and was placed atop the dresser.

A few weeks later, Dan was able to cut the painted screws (which were about 2 inches long) to the right size. The dresser was finally complete. All it took was about 6 months, start to finish.

And another 4 months after that, I have finally shared it with you today! God my timing is great.

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