My current hyperfocus is renovation and anything to do with home improvements. I had a few weeks of summer holiday and I kept real busy around the house.

While the paint in the bathroom cabinets was still wet, I was already onto my next projec; restoring an old dresser. I did an exchange with my aunt by giving her a Fatboy (a fancy beanbag) I no longer needed and in turn got this dresser she has gotten from a fleamarket and painted white to suit her home at the time.

I’m not a huge fan of white furniture and I don’t think it suits our home so I decided to strip off the paint and then figure out what I want to do with it.

I first used a heat gun to get the paint nice and bubbly to scrape of as much of as I could. It took quite a while but it was very satisfying when big pieces came off at once. Some of it was really soaked into the grooves and scratches which was a bitch to try and get off.

Once I saw what was under the paint I already knew I wanted to let the wood show and just put on some sort of wood oil finish. Since I wasn’t going to paint the dresser, it took me fucking forever to sand in order to get the old white paint off. Otherwise I wasn’t too concered about getting everything perfectly smooth because I do like old wood furniture that shows it’s been used and abused and is still standing.

That’s it for sanding and oopsies, the dresser also lost its legs on a whim. It was near impossible to get off all the white and some of it was spackle so I decided to just use a random coctail of dark wood stains to cover the biggest spots.

Apparently I have no pictures from the varnishing process but I used the same combo of Osmo Colour Wood Wax in Cognac and Liberon Hard Wax Oil that I used on the bathroom wood tiles. The finish is anything but even but I actually like that because this is an old drawer and it’s definitely quite utilitarian and it will stay as such.

Dresser is back on its place and like magic, the wall colour changed too!