i did it all by myself.

have you ever had one of those projects where you think to yourself, "self, this is going to be such a fun, quick project! it shouldn't take us more than two good weekends to knock this out, and then we can keep right on rolling onto other projects!" and then all of a sudden its a month later and your project has taken doubly long and all your hypothetical 'other' projects are perpetually and indefinitely procrastinated...

yeah exactly that. we've had a few of those projects at our house lately. one has been the flowerbeds and the mulch and the general sprucing of our outdoor space. (and i promise eventually i might take a few pictures of how Mark eventually decimated the mulch mountain) another has been my craigslist dresser.

 

before. April 27.

i fully expected to have this thing refinished weeks ago. and i started out really well. i had it moved downstairs and stripped the day after we brought it home.

stripped. April 28.

i sanded it the next Saturday, and i planned to have it stained and maybe even sealed that weekend, but that was before my eye exploded with roid rage, which was THREE FULL WEEKS AGO.

sanded. May 4.

so instead of being a two-weekend project, i managed to stretch this one into a whole month. but the good news is that i finished it all up last week, and we just moved it upstairs over the weekend.

done. May 25.

 

the even better news is that i did this project all by myself. well, except for the parts that required heavy lifting and driving downtown. Mark helped with those parts. but as far as sanding, staining, and sealing, that was all me. for a while i was intimidated by the prospect of the polyurethane, because i was convinced that i would ruin the last step of the process with ugly brush marks and hate the end result, but i shouldn't have worried. the cheap foam brushes i used left a perfectly smooth finish.

 

 probably the best picture of the new stain color.

 

when we first got the dresser, i originally thought that i was going to convert the top drawer  into an open shelf space for the cable box and the blu-ray player. but after seeing how solid the dresser was, it seemed like it would be a real shame to waste a perfectly good drawer and have to cut holes in the back for cords and ventilation. the boxes weren't especially ugly anyway, and we had been living with them on top of the old desk just fine for months, so i was happy to just refinish the dresser rather than make any drastic changes.

 

to keep the cords from hanging in an ugly mess behind and below the dresser, i had to get a little bit creative. while i was out running errands on Saturday, i picked up a metal magazine file from target. i forgot to take a picture of it and i can't find one online, but it has a bunch of little holes in the sides that worked perfectly with a couple command hooks to wrangle the powerstrip, wires, and cords and keep them up off the floor.

the nasty oil stains on the top of the dresser were too deep to sand out, so they're still there. i just covered them with a cheap fabric napkin i found on clearance at BedBathandBeyond. i still need to iron it, but i was more interested in getting the dresser in place than i was about perfectly styling it at this point. plus i wasn't about to drag out the iron and ironing board just for a napkin.

i had a hard time getting good pictures of the new color of the dresser thanks to the window right behind it and the lovely sunshine we had on Saturday, but Mark says it looks very much the same as when we brought it home. except that its darker, and shinier, and just all around more lovely. definitely not too shabby for a $29 investment and a few weeks of work.