Apothecary Dresser

The Apothecary Dresser Makeover

The last two weeks have been busy getting ready for a "Spring Event" for our booth space at Daisies & Olives Antique Mall in Prairie Grove. The event took place this last weekend. On Thursday, we loaded up our treasures and reworked and stocked the entire space for the event on Friday. Most of you who follow along, already know about our booth space, which is filled with my painted and refurbished furniture finds, DIY home decor and vintage pieces that I procured from my antique shopping hunts. I love filling the booth with unique, one of a kind items for the home. It is a great outlet for me to create and make a little money at the same time.

In two weeks, we painted a round dining table, a bistro table set with a small round table and two chairs, painted and upholstered two formal dining chairs, made a barn door for our feature wall, painted and redesigned our Apothecary Dresser and created 6 bags of DIY home decor. We also shopped for all the vintage containers for our handmade floral arrangements for Spring and built some home decor items like trays and wooden display boxes. All in all, it was a busy two weeks, but I was really happy with the results. I will be sharing all the pictures from our "Spring Event" with you later this week!

One of my favorite finds that I got to redesign for our booth was this 70's looking dresser. I had recently discovered another DIY blogger by the name of Sawdust2Stitches, which you can see her blog here. When I found her, I had been searching on Pinterest and noticed a pin of an amazing Apothecary Cabinet that she created! I loved it so much that it inspired me to look for a dresser to duplicate the look. Then, 2 days before the Spring Event, I found this dresser!

Here is the before picture:

I bought this dresser at a local second hand furniture store. The pieces for sale there might be missing some hardware or have some light wear, but normally they will have great pieces for a good price. I paid $60 for this dresser. You can see from the photo that it was missing a few knobs on the drawers, which is not a big deal for me! Secondly, it had little square panes that look like separate drawers if pulls were attached. I had purchased some library card pulls from Michael's weeks ago in anticipation of finding something that I could use them on! The only problem with the bottom drawers was that they had a very distinct texture to the front. When I bought the dresser, I figured I could sand this texture smooth in order to paint over it.

When I got this baby home and started to sand the drawers, I sanded until what I thought was a smooth surface. When I cleared the dust and looked at my sanding job, I noticed that under the texture was real wood! Say what!!!! I mean I seriously hooped and hollered like a lunatic in my front yard after my discovery. Good thing I have awesome neighbors! ;0)

There was a rounded bar across the middle and I really didn't like it, plus to do a thorough job with the hand sander, I needed to remove it. After gently trying to pry the bar off of the front of the drawer, I realized that it was screwed in from the inside of the drawer! Whoops! I was a little excited at my discovery of the wood drawer front and knew that the rounded bar needed to come off; it was going to come off one way or another! :) But luckily for me, I only had to unscrew it! LOL! You can see the difference it made once the entire drawer was sanded to reveal the wood, as opposed to the textured drawer below it!

Here is a look at the entire piece after it was sanded down with the bars and hardware off. I knew I would have to figure out how to plug the holes left from the hardware. The other thing I knew after I had sanded it, was that I wanted to stain the top and the apothecary drawers to match and paint the rest of the dresser a light gray! Sometimes it happens like this when refurbishing furniture; you can either see it right away or it reveals itself in the process!

I was so tired at this point in the game because I had already had some late nights with only 1 day left to finish this beauty. However, I was so excited by the outcome, that I was able to stay up Wednesday night until 1:00 a.m. and get it all done. Here is what it looked like after it was finished and in the booth space @ Daisies & Olives. What do you think? I spray painted the brass part of the legs with Rustoleum in Oiled Bronze to match the overall look of the dresser before I had chalk painted.

As you can see from this close up, we filled the nail holes by removing this metal piece in the middle from the rounded bars we removed and reattached them after spray painting in Oiled Bronze. We then took these wooden screw plugs and stained and adhered them to the dresser drawer to cover all the holes.

I love how the dresser turned out and I really think you could use this as a dresser, a console for an entry way to the home or a buffet in a dining room. I think I would like to keep it for myself but.....that's usually how I know it will sell fast. I listed it for sale for $450. My husband, Garrett, made these sweet wooden boxes that I stained and attached the library card pulls. I thought they would be cute to decorate the top of the dresser. Not only are the boxes decoration, but could be useful throughout your home, especially in a home office!

I can't wait to show you the entire booth space in our next blog post! I will also be sharing an upholstery job soon of the two formal French Country dining chairs we put in the booth last week!