Retro furniture from the 50’s and 60’s is wildly popular. The advantage of repurposing 50 year old dressers (besides keeping it out of the landfill) is that they’re generally made better than some furniture manufactured today. Unfortunately, most have seen better days. There are so many ways to update an old piece, no need to be boring with a plain old paint job!
The wood veneer on this “blond” multi drawer dresser had a couple of chips and some knobs were missing. Other than that it was in great shape.
A great paint job requires good prep work. My husband Tom used a power sander to remove the old finish. You can certainly do it by hand, but it’s time consuming. A power sander is was much faster.
He was able to sand the chips smooth, so you would never know the front had been damaged after it was painted.
I settled on a lime green, turquoise, warm grey and cream color scheme. The dresser is divided into three sections, but instead of painting each drawer a different color (that would have been too easy!); I decided on irregular, random width stripes.
Stripes look complicated, but the results are worth the trouble.
First I primed the dresser. Since I wanted a solid base, I painted t
he entire piece with the cream color. There isn’t a right or wrong way to paint stripes, I didn’t want a “pattern.” I started with the left third and painted it with the warm grey.
This dresser had little bow knobs and round ball knobs. The bow knobs have two screws 1’ apart. I couldn’t find anything to fit that measurement in my time frame, so I just painted them to match. Besides, they’re cute.
I found wood knobs at the hardware store and painted them turquoise and lime green. The easiest way to paint the knobs is to stick the screws into floral foam or a piece of Styrofoam.
This project took many hours, but the results are worth it.
