Craigslist Refresh

 I love Craigslist.  Yes, you have to deal with flakes and weirdos sometimes, but it's the best place to find terrific pieces for next to nothing.  I brought this dresser home a little while ago for only $20.

Ok, it's not much to look at, but it was all wood, solid construction with dovetailed drawers, and didn't smell icky.  That made it a winner.

I wanted to use this dresser down in the rec room for snacks & chips for the boys & their friends.  Remember when we got that awesome deal on a frig, back in May?  I told you about it here.  Well our BFFs had outgrown their small man-fridge in their man cave, so our old 36" side by side frig went into their garage.  Of course that left them with an extra 24" frig, which made it's way back to our house last month.  I decided to carve out some space in the rec room for a snack bar area.  The frig now holds popsicles, yogurt, cheese sticks, etc.  To make it a full snack bar, I needed storage for chips & pretzels & plates & spoons. 

But you know me, I couldn't just grab a dresser off Craigslist and call it done.  It needed a little bit of rehab.  I started by giving the whole piece a light sanding.

I removed the handles.  I keep a leatherman multi-tool in my purse, because you never know when you might need a pair of pliers or a screwdriver.  Such as when someone takes the phillips head screwdriver out of your perfectly organized kitchen tool drawer, that I showed you here, and forgets to replace it.  Grrr.

I used 2 cans of Valspar spray paint in Yellow Creme on the body of the dresser and the drawers, and 3 coats of Minwax Polyshades in Dakota Mahogany on the top, because I wanted a durable surface for the inevitable dirty ice cream scoop left on the dresser.  I love Minwax Polyshades.  It's a stain and polyurethane coating in one.  You don't need to sand to bare wood, and it still works beautifully, with just a bit of steel wool between coats.  Love, love, love the stuff.

I had every intention of replacing the hardware, but the pulls on the upper drawers were smaller than the typical 3" spread, and paying a premium for a weird size for a rec room snack bar didn't make sense.


The one on top is a typical 3" spread, the other one is a weird 2 3/4" spread.



I then considered spray painting the existing hardware, but after seeing the way the tarnished brass looked against the newly spiffed up dresser, I just put them back on.  Have you priced out aged brass hardware?  My patina'ed ones were the free choice, and I love the way they look against the soft yellow.

So here's my boys new snack bar(not yet in place in the rec room.)

And because we all like a good before and after.  Before.

And After.  Look how much better the hardware looks, and I didn't do a thing to it.  Love!

Thanks for popping in and painting with me. Linking this up to House of Grace's Best of 2011.