Curbside to Bedside Dresser Rehab

My littlest girl is done with shirts and shorts...she only wants to wear dresses anymore and her closet has been locked since she was able to walk because it holds all the stuff that was once in my man cave before the man cave turned into a pink & purple nursery. So she needs a place to hang up her pretty dresses. Thanks to the neighbors down the block...mission accomplished.

Confession: I didn't think about making an Instructable until after I had already started the tear down. This is how it started. A dresser with great bones, but long since past its prime.

You could probably find one of these at a thrift store, but as luck would have it the folks down the block just happened to put it on the curb. It was real wood and heavy. It was clear why they threw it out, one drawer was bused up, the hardware was falling off of all but one of the drawers. Luckily for me...all I need is one drawer.

I took out all the drawers and discovered each drawer area had its own separate wooden housing. Each shelf also had its own wooden support.

I used my jigsaw to cut through the support, and a little elbow grease to tear out the excess.

Then sanded the top and sides to try to remove the varnish that was either water damaged or peeling after decades of use.

I ended up moving the bar up once I got it inside. It was 100 degrees outside and by this point my brain wasn't working that well.

Added an old support piece (cut to size) to help support the bar and make sure the bracket screws did not go through the outer side.

Added a new coat of stain to the outside. Black spray paint to the inside. A night of really weird dreams due to inhaling too much spray paint...and it was ready to be moved in.

The final step was moving it into the house. Shoes went on the bottom and in the bottom drawer with socks to the 3-year-old (who is very independent) can have easy access to pick out all her own clothes and get dressed in the morning.

I liked the concept so well, we did a little moving around and turned big sister's old chest of drawers into the play dress up center. It was much simpler because the drawers were something I bought almost two decades ago when I went to college. For this one I just used a $5 tension rod and only had to remove the drawers (except the bottom one for shoes, skirts and fairy wings).