Refinishing a New Dresser for Boo

Mr. MadeIt was browsing Goodwill one day and he found this:

Cute, right?  We'd been saying for a while that we needed to get Boo a dresser, so this was a great chance.  It needed a little TLC...

But the price was right!  It was marked $19.99, but Goodwill was having a half-off furniture sale (Goodwill has sales?  Who knew?) so we got it for ten dollars.  Sweet.  Let the refinishing begin!

First, deconstruction.  Mr. MadeIt didn't like the carved decorativeness of the handles and corners, so they came off.  (I thought they were cute for a little girl, but hubby was right that the dresser would be more timeless without them.  Maybe I'll make a matching picture frame out of them...)  And the rails (is that what you would call them?) had to come off the top (but just temporarily).  Drawers, too.

Then sanding.  For a project like this, it was time to break out the power tools!  We used a random orbit hand sander, so it would be harder to gouge out a section if we sanded in one area for too long.

Poor thing needed a lot of sanding.  It had bubbled up where moisture had soaked in, so that had to be sanded down, to say nothing of the gunk that was stuck to the surface...

Next was painting.  The paint guy at Lowe's recommended a satin finish enamel paint.  He told us it would be nice and durable--very important for children's furniture!  And the paint was still soap and water clean-up (no paint thinners or anything).  I even got some paint on my jacket, and the paint washed out!  (I don't recommend experimenting with that, though.)

I don't have any more in-process pictures, but I bet you can image it:  paint, new hardware, and put everything back together.  It took forever to get the finish even--maybe we should have primed it first?--but eventually, we got it all done.

And the moment we've all been waiting for..The After Picture.

(Yes, Boo chooses her own clothes.  She's not even two, but she sure has opinions on everything!)

Boo wasn't much interested in the dresser when it was sitting mostly completed in the living room, but the instant we set the finished dresser down in Boo's room, she picked up some of her toys and piled them on the top of the dresser.  "Oh, this is mine," she seemed to say.  Yep, little one.  Mommy and Daddy made it just for you.