project baby {diy mid-century dresser update}

when I was planning & sourcing furniture for eloise’s nursery, I knew that I wanted to get a low-boy dresser that could not only double as a changing table, but also be used as eloise grows up. I scoured craigslist for weeks in search of a mid-century dresser that was in good shape, but reasonably priced. finally I found one & we drove down south to tacoma to pick it up. the dresser sat around for weeks until I finally had time to paint it & get it ready for the nursery (I was 38 weeks along at that point!). while this was a simple & straight-forward project, I loosely followed this young house love post.

in its original state, the top & sides were super dark, almost black. the gentleman we bought it from told us that his sister had just refinished the dresser with this darker color. definitely not my favorite, but I loved the rest of the piece & knew that was an easy fix!

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I started by taking out all of the drawers & sanding everything down. I used a palm sander for the main part of the dresser & hand sanded the drawer fronts with a block sander. then I wiped all the dust down & started painting the main dresser & removed the handles from the drawer fronts. I used this Behr Paint & Primer to save myself a separate priming step.

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it ended up taking three thin coats of white to cover the dark wood & get the white color that I wanted. I rolled most of the coats, but used a brush for the smaller details along the front of the dresser.

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after the white paint was dry, I brushed on two coats of a polycrylic coat with a small brush. I also did two coats of poly on the drawer fronts.

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& here is the final product (again – you already would have seen these in the nursery reveal!). I am really, really happy with how this dresser turned out. it is such a great & timeless piece & is exactly the warmth I was looking for for this space. I also know that this will be such a great piece for eloise for years to come.

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have you refinished a craigslist find recently?

M

2 thoughts on “project baby {diy mid-century dresser update}”

    1. Yes! Luckily this piece was in really good shape and only needed work for my own aesthetic taste! Though the trade-off was that we definitrly didn’t get this for a steal, but it was so worth it!

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