Oak dresser from the screened in porch – before and after!

Our fifth blog post from September 2015. This dresser takes me a lot farther back than my moving into this old farm house and starting this blog. For as long as I can remember it was always out in the screened in porch. Who knew one day I would be taking it home with me, my heart full of grief, after my Grandma passed? It was one of my very first projects. I don’t know what compelled me to tackle all of the furniture from the house (maybe too much HGTV?) but I wasn’t willing to give up any of it and it turned out that I absolutely loved the work.

That furniture refinishing adventure was actually the beginning of my turning my attention to this beautiful old home and starting the remodel of Grandma’s house. Of course all of the furniture came back here.

(Three dressers in our master bedroom, two dressers on our main floor, a radio stand and two dressers that became our bathroom vanities just to name a few!)

This old beauty is currently residing in our guest bedroom!

Its pretty amazing to read back and realize how much has changed here at Grandma’s house! Here is the original post:

This to me is my very best before and after when it comes to a save I made from the farm house. I would give anything to go back and get a good before picture of this beast.

Why don’t I have one you ask?

Because I’m a bull and I couldn’t wait to strip it so I just threw myself into the job the first chance I got and boom I had forgotten to take a before.

Seriously, the before picture should have been taken even before we cleared out the screened in porch because this beast was not even recognizable as a piece of furniture at that point.

No one knows where this oak dresser came from, nor does anyone know exactly how long it sat out on the screened in porch. Both my mother and aunt would agree that it had been there for as long as they could remember.

There is a rather good chance that this oak dresser may have even been in the house when my Grandparents moved in in the ’50s.

We just don’t know.

What I do know is that before it was moved to the screened in porch to experience all of the degrees of Minnesota weather, it had been painted white and a mirror (not its mirror) had been added to the back of it.

(Check out the jewelry hanger I made out of that old mirror’s frame!)

It may have had its own mirror once I only know that the mirror that had been added had fallen off at some point and was sitting behind it. The entire thing was so utterly covered in dirt that no one wanted to even touch it.

This is the kind of filth that’s hard to explain, dirt that is so old and so dense its like skin. But, I thought, what the hell, what have I got to lose? It wasn’t terribly heavy and, amazingly, the drawers worked and it seemed sturdy.

So, I took it home to see what I could do.

I started out by hosing this puppy off as I had no intention of touching that second skin of filth any more then I needed to. I mean, seriously, I don’t mind getting dirty but this thing was FILTHY.

Underneath the paint was what someone who likes shabby chic would probably have paid a fortune to achieve. It was utterly cracked, jagged, rather amazing actually. (This is when I should have taken the before picture.)

It came off in one quick stripping and became what you see in the picture below.

Underneath revealed solid oak.

With a couple of passes with my sander it looked brand new. I consider this old beast my greatest save/transformation but, amazingly, it was also one of my easiest.

It had seen so much weather that it sanded up really quickly and took stain in text book style. At first I had planned this for the third bathroom vanity in the house but it became so dear to my heart that I decided to keep it as a dresser.

I used this red oak stain by minwax and two coats of minwax polycrylic.

The hardware is off of amazon and its an absolutely awesome deal click here to check it out.

The knobs are heavy, really high quality and so little in cost compared to other hardware that I’ve seen that you’ll be seeing these pretty little knobs on just about everything in my house! We love how this oak dresser turned out!