French Linen Transformation

I bought this dresser a couple months ago. A friend of mine saw it at a thrift store and texted me to see if I wanted it. The price wasn't great but she said it was solid wood and all the drawers worked, which is a huge bonus. I told her to bring it on.

When I finally had time to work on it, I realized it sucked! The drawers were pretty much all messed up and I would have to replace the drawer slide and glide on all but two. I texted my friend and asked if she wanted it back and she said no. I decided to keep the bottom two drawers in it because they were fine. The other drawers went up for sale and someone bought them all for $20. Now I didn't have as much money tied up in this thing. I was so frustrated that I took my mallet and starting knocking the crap out of it. I removed all of its guts and kept just the body.

My husband put birch plywood inside to build one giant shelf. We nailed on a 1x3 to cover up that dental molding on top. I bought a decorative piece of scrollwork from Lowes and glued it in the center of that board. We put molding on the inside to frame out the new shelf and molding on the outside to frame out the front and cover up the sides of the plywood.

I spent hours sanding the top down so I could stain and refinish it but the top was so bad it didn't work. I ended up painting the whole thing a mixture of Chateau Grey and Versailles. Then I put two coats of French linen on top. I replaced the hardware on the drawers. Then I waxed the outside with dark wax. I sanded down the top after I was done as an experiment and it looks pretty good. I figured it would look great as a buffet, sofa table, bookcase, in a mudroom or anywhere else. It's a great piece of furniture.

Before & After