I Bought This Dated Dresser for $80… Can I Make It Worth $700?

This is a heavy one. I thrifted this dresser a few weeks ago for $80 and there's nothing too wrong with it other than the fact that it's outdated, especially with all of this clunky mismatched hardware and the really thick all the way to the floor trim across the base. My plan for it is really just to lighten and brighten it up, bring it into today's home decor style preferences and increase its value by a lot. This thing was probably made sometime in the 1970s as part of a full bedroom suite with a matching tall boy chest, some nightstands and a big mirror. It's pretty standard mid-range department store stuff with an oak veneer over top of particle board panels. The trim piece across the front and all the trim around the drawer faces are solid wood but the rest is definitely not. It's actually in really great condition with only a few minor scratches and scuffs and a bit of tear out happening along the bottom edges from being dragged across a carpeted floor. All of the drawers are really clean inside. A couple of them have some paper protecting the bottoms with dovetail joinery even though it's dovetailed particle board. They're all sliding well but a lot of them are kind of catching or hitting the frames and I'm pretty sure that that's just because they're not in the right spots. I think the single knob drawers go along the top and then the bottom six would have all had the same bail pulls. This double knob situation is definitely not original. Before I start pulling things apart I need to figure out exactly what I'm going to do with this thing. I think I have a general design direction in mind but rather than leaving all of the ideas scattered between a million open browser tabs on my laptop and screenshots and notes in my phone I'm going to pull the whole plan together inside Milanote. It's basically an online bulletin board for planning out creative projects just like this one. They've got hundreds of built-in templates to help get you started or you can build your own board from scratch which is usually what I do for my furniture projects. I always start with a few before photos of the piece. Sometimes the actual piece of furniture gets buried in a pile in the garage so this just gives me a quick reminder of what I'm working with and any little details that I don't want to forget about. From there I start building out the makeover. I know I want to use gallery series paint in the color dumpling so I'll drop in a paint swatch then I'll add this more contemporary hardware that should completely change the whole feel and I'm also thinking about adding some of these little legs to give the dresser a bit more height. I've saved all of these product links right on the board so they're nice and easy for me to find later on. That's what I love about planning this way. Seeing everything together before I start buying materials makes it so much easier to decide what works and if I change my mind halfway through rearranging or swapping things out only takes a few seconds. I've also created another board with some dressers that I think are going to be kind of comparable to this one and their current price points which might give you a better idea of how and why putting all of this effort into an older piece of furniture can be so profitable. Their web clipper tool makes it so easy to save inspiration directly onto my board without having to hunt around for it later. A simple budget table will help me track exactly what I've invested into this project and whether I need to rein things in before costs start creeping up too high and now that everything is in one place I have a much clearer plan of where this makeover is headed. If you're someone who likes collecting ideas and just staying organized throughout the entire project Milano is a fantastic tool to get all the creative clutter out of your head. You can even use their mobile app on your phone when you're away from your computer and get all the random screenshots out of your camera roll and into a workspace that you can actually use. If you think this is a tool that you can use too I'm going to leave a link in the video description so you can sign up for your own free Milano account with absolutely no time limit. Now I need to see if my plan will actually work. I'm going to play around with these drawers first to figure out where each one fits best with the least amount of rubbing and hitting. I'll probably still need to shave a little bit off when I get into sanding just to leave enough clearance for the added thickness of the primer and paint that I'll be adding. These have metal guides attached to the bottoms that slide along wood tracks inside the frame and everything seems to be in really good condition and working properly. Once I figure out the best spot for each drawer I'm just going to label them so that I don't have to go through this whole process again at the end when it's time to put things back together and then I can get rid of all of this chunky clunky hardware. The baseboard across the front is a little too tall and I think it's just going to look awkward if I leave it like this and just chuck some new legs on there so I do want to trim some of this excess off which is also going to let me get rid of the dodgy bits of particle board on the side panels. It does have these nice adjustable feet but I'm not going to need those once I get the new legs on so I will unscrew them and get them out of my way. I can reuse the mounting blocks that they're in though for my new legs which is pretty handy. This one inch painter's tape lined up with the last notch in this is going to represent where I'm cutting. I think that is going to leave the trim design still looking intentional but a better proportion to have legs coming out of the bottom of it if that makes sense and then I'll measure out a nice straight line just following that tape line down both sides too. I keep forgetting that I bought myself this rip guide last year to help with long cuts like this and keep my circular saw going nice and straight. It's and follow it but this should help keep my saw from drifting off track at all. The sled, this blue part, is where the saw sits so I just need to slide it along the track until the little red indicator line lines up with the edge of my tape and then lock that in place. Then my saw sits right on top of the sled and gets clamped on there securely with a couple of little set screws. Now as I make my cut this kind of handle piece will just ride along the opposite edge of the bottom of the trim and keep everything nice and square. Hopefully that means I will get a perfectly straight cut without having to fight to stay on my line. Nice! That looks great. Now I can tip the dresser up on either end and make the same cut on both sides. My blade wasn't set deep enough to cut all the way through these mounting blocks so I'm just going to take them all the way off and trim them down to the same height on my miter saw instead. Since these pieces are really short I am going to clamp each one right onto my saw plate so that I can keep my hands well out of the way while I make these cuts and then I'll just use a little new wood glue and the same screws to get them right back where they came from. Okay these legs come with a little collar that they bolt into so I need to drill a hole into each of the mounting blocks that's big enough to accommodate this. Then I can screw the collars in place and my new legs will have their new homes. I'm just going to kind of eyeball where I want each of these to sit, mark the center point, and drill the holes. Okay time to clean up all of this dust mess. Get this flipped the right way up again and then I can move on with things. Usually cleaning is my very first step but since I knew I was going to be making all of that mess with the cutting I figured I might as well wait until that was done. It is really important to thoroughly clean and degrease old furniture before you do any sanding. Obviously you want to get rid of any old dirt or grime but more importantly there can be traces of wax, oil, or silicone left behind from everyday use and especially those spray-on furniture polishes that are very popular. They're great for making furniture nice and shiny when it's in your home but when it comes time to refinish that residue will really prevent your new finish from adhering properly. And the last thing you want to do is take a sander to it first and grind all of that contamination down into the surface where it then becomes impossible to get rid of. I like to use simple green to do my cleaning just with some warm water and a microfiber cloth but any household degreaser will do. I'm going to be replacing the massive handles with one simple knob on each drawer. They're not particularly big or heavy drawers so one knob is going to work just fine but that means that I need to fill in the old hardware holes on the bottom six drawers and I'm going to use some bondo for that. This is a two part filler so you need to mix the base putty in the can with a little bit of this separate cream hardener that starts a chemical reaction once they're both mixed to cure everything rock hard. One very important thing to remember though is never to dip anything that has touched that blue hardener back into the can if you need more product. All you're going to do is contaminate and ruin the whole thing. Only clean sticks go into the can. This stuff does set up really fast so I like to mix up really small amounts at a time. You've only got three or four minutes to get it where you need it before it starts to thicken up or harden up to be too hard to work with. I've also popped a little piece of tape over the holes on the inside of the drawers and that is going to give me something to really pack that bondo in against so that I can get a nice solid fill all the way through without having anything oozing out the back side. While that finishes curing I'm going to get started on the scuff sanding. I'm using 120 grit sandpaper. It's going to kind of be the sweet spot for what I need on here. 80 grit would be more aggressive than necessary and could leave me with some pretty deep scratches while something finer like a 220 would just take way longer to buff out the scratches that are already on here and knock down this slick factory finish. And that's really the main goal. I don't need to sand everything back to bare wood. I just want to take away the shine and give the surface some tooth so that when I apply my primer on top it's got something to grab onto and can form a really strong mechanical bond and stick. To get into and around all of the trim details on these drawers I'm switching over to a foam abrasive. It's the same grit but it's a little bit squishy so it can flex and form around all of the contours and let me get the same scuff without accidentally grinding down any of the details or changing their shape at all. For the flat areas in the center with the bondo though I'm going to switch back to the regular sandpaper. The firmer backing on here will cut through that excess filler a lot better. While we're here with the drawers I'm also going to sand off this brown factory paint from the dovetails and then I'm going to switch over to some 80 grit just to take a little bit of material off of each of the edges of the drawers. I want to give myself an extra millimeter or two of clearance so that there's enough room for the added thickness of the primer and paint. The last thing I want to do is get everything beautifully cleaned up and finished, put the drawers back in and have them rubbing on each other or hitting the frame. That's just asking for the new paint to get damaged and after doing all this work what would be the point? My damp microfiber cloth is going to pick up all of the fine sanding dust and while everything's drying back out I'm going to wrap the drawer boxes with some of this masking plastic to protect them and keep them nice and clean inside while I'm painting. A lot of people will just leave the drawers inside the cabinet and paint everything that way but then you have to go back with a brush and touch up all the edges and any framing that's behind the drawers. I've just never really liked doing it that way so for me taking the extra time here at the beginning to mask off the drawer boxes and paint everything separately just works better. If you want to paint with the drawers inside the box you do you boo. Some of these seams where the trim meets in the corners are a little wider than they probably should be and once everything gets painted that's only gonna highlight them even more so I'm gonna work a little bit of this paintable caulking into each corner just to tighten it up, clean it up. I'm literally just smearing a little bit in here with my finger and then wiping away all the excess with my damp rag so that everything is nice and smooth. You'll still be able to tell that these are all separate pieces of trim. I'm not trying to completely erase the joints but filling in little gaps like this just makes them less noticeable and gives the finished piece a much cleaner more professional look. Day two. I kind of gave up on things yesterday after I got all the caulking applied to the seams on the drawers. Today I need to get some contractor's paper down on the floor to kind of hold some of the extra dust in the garage down out of any wet paint and catch any paint over spray mess that I make. I need to get at least one coat of primer on maybe two and then probably two or three coats of paint but the paint that I've chosen dries really fast. Hopefully it's raining and kind of humid out here so as long as everything dries the way it should I should be able to wrap this all up today. Oak is pretty notorious for bleeding orangey brown tannins up through lighter colored paints and since I've sanded through the original finish in a few spots while I was trying to buff out some scratches I do definitely want to make sure that those areas are really well sealed. This bin shellac base primer is pretty much my ride-or-die primer because it does all the things you could need a primer to do so I don't have to guess. It gives me really great adhesion, blocks in stains and tannins, and it'll create one consistent surface over all the different materials or textures on this piece so that my paint looks the same everywhere. It is a bit of an ordeal to work with this though. It is highly flammable so I can't safely put it through my electric sprayer and it doesn't play nicely with any kind of water so cleanup is a whole thing. It also sticks really well to pretty much everything and I have had such trouble, we'll call it trouble, getting it cleaned out of my pneumatic sprayer too so I roll it. I just use cheap microfiber roller covers that I can toss when I'm done and I like to line my tray with a little bit of tinfoil too just to make the whole cleanup process easy. All right I don't see any stains popping through this right away so I think I'm good with just one coat of primer. Once this is dry I will come back with a fine sanding pad to knock down any roller texture or little fuzzies that got caught in it, dust it off one more time and then I should be ready to paint. I'm going to use my Wagner electric sprayer today mostly because it happened to be sitting at the top of my clean bucket of sprayer parts in the laundry room. This is a really simple sprayer to use and gives a great finish. I'm going to pour some of my Gallery Series cabinet paint through a strainer first to catch any little clumps or bits that could clog up the spray tip. This paint is actually a really good consistency for spraying straight out of the can so I haven't really been thinning it at all. I have used this gallon on probably five or six different furniture flips already and I'm just finally getting down to the last little bit. Buying a gallon of this is definitely an investment. It is not a cheap paint but when you're using it for furniture it goes a surprisingly long way and for me it delivers one of the nicest and most durable finishes that I've ever worked with especially since it doesn't need the extra time or expense of adding a separate top coat afterward. Before I start spraying the dresser I'm going to test out my flow and air pressure settings down here on the floor and make any little adjustments until I like what I'm seeing coming out. Too much paint coming out is obviously a problem. You're going to get lots of drips and sags but too little paint isn't really good either because you just won't get a nice even finish and unfortunately there isn't really one magic setting I can tell you that's going to work every time. The paint, the sprayer, and even the conditions that you're working with will all affect how it sprays so you kind of just have to dial things up or down a little bit each time you spray until it looks right and feels right, you know? One thing I've learned about this paint in particular is that it really does not like to be applied thick. If you get too much paint on in one coat it can actually start to crackle as it dries so it's important to stick with nice light coats and just build up the coverage gradually instead of trying to get everything completely covered in one pass. I'm going to leave this first coat to dry for about an hour and then I can come back give everything a really quick sand with a super fine grit just to knock down any little dust nibs that have landed in the wet paint before I spray on the second coat. I almost never clean my sprayer out in between coats. With these kind of water-based products I really don't think there's any need to. You do need to make sure that you get the little paint booger that dries over the tip while it's sitting in between coats though so before I start the next one I just pick that off make sure everything is spraying properly again and I'm good to go. This may need a third coat but these first two seem to be covering really well so I'm gonna wait for this to dry before I make that judgment call. As long as I've got good even coverage two properly applied coats of this paint will give me plenty of durability. There's really no need to pile on extra paint just for the sake of having a third coat. Looking good! Let's get these drawers unwrapped and figure out where to drill the new knob holes. I'm going to make myself a little template out of some paper so that I can just pick it up and plop it into each panel and use that to mark exactly where I need to drill right in the center. That'll be a whole lot easier and probably more accurate than trying to measure around all of this trim and find the center point on every single drawer. I was thinking about adding some drawer liners but honestly these are in pretty perfect almost brand new condition inside so I really don't see any reason to cover them up. I am going to pour a little bit of my leftover paint into a small pot though so that I can send that along with the new owners that way if the dresser ever does get a nick or a scratch somewhere down the road they'll have the exact paint they need to touch it up. Since I make most of my income from sharing videos like this one the majority of the furniture that I've flipped over the last five years has actually been donated right back into my community. Sometimes I'll drop a piece back off at the thrift store so they can resell it again for a profit. I've given some pieces to a small family-owned secondhand furniture store near me to sell and sometimes I will literally just plop something at the end of my own driveway with a free to a good home sign on it and let some lucky passerby score themselves a new piece of furniture but every once in a while I do still like to list a piece for sale on Facebook Marketplace mostly just to keep my finger on the pulse of what's happening in the market and make sure I haven't completely lost my touch when it comes to actually selling this stuff and this dresser is going to be one of those pieces. Based on the prices of comparable new furniture that I found online and some of the other refinished pieces that are currently listed around me I think I'm going to start this one at $6.95 and see what happens. I'm in a pretty small rural market I don't feel like dealing with delivery so I think that's probably getting close to the top end of what people around here are willing to pay but you never really know until you put it out there so we'll see what happens. Thank you so much for hanging out with me through this one I really appreciate you being here and hopefully you were able to pick up a tip or two that you can use on a project of your own I am really happy with how this one turned out and now we'll see if I can find it a new home I'll catch you next time