The dresser part I

The details on how to refinish a dresser.

My dresser started out with a very thick polyurethane coating. The polyurethane was very smooth and shiny.

Steps

1. Very important step for lazy people. Skip the sanding. :) I've gone to home depot and they always told me I "should" sand it down.. blah blah blah. But from my personal experience with refinishing about 5 major furniture pieces, no sanding is required but I'm not a professional so don't listen to me. Skip the sanding if you're lazy and sand your heart away if you want to be perfect. I do sand down bumpy or rough spots to get a smooth surface so when I paint it will feel nice and smooth.

2. Wipe down the dresser so its nice, clean and dry.

3. Use a good separate primer only if you are going for a lighter color. For example, if you want to paint something dark brown and the existing color is blonde then bypass the primer. But if you want to paint something white and its currently blonde then use a primer. Paint on thin coats of primer until you get even coverage. I also like to sand very lightly with very fine sandpaper after using the primer so my project is nice and smooth. When i'm talking "sand very lightly" I'm talking about 15 minutes of sanding for the whole piece.

4. Special for my dresser. I used grasscloth wallpaper and covered the center of the drawers. I applied the wallpaper by wetting it and pasting it onto the dresser. I found the wallpaper at Homedepot for under $10 a roll. It can be found near the contact paper and liners section at Homedept.

5. Hardest part of the project. Pick a good paint color and paint the whole dresser. Paint two thin coats. Make sure to let them dry in between.

6. Once everything was dry, I used single nail heads and hammered them into the dressers one by one. I did not have to do any measurements. I just made approximate guesses that looked good and started hammering.

                           Here is a close up picture of the grasscloth wallpaper and nailheads.

Before picture just for comparison