REFINISHING a discarded dresser - saved from the trash!

Hey everybody! Welcome to my very first official YouTube video. I've been wanting to do this for a while, and I had a few smaller videos posted, but this is kind of my first real video. Hopefully the first of many to come. But let's get into this. So this is a vintage Kaufman dresser that I picked up curbside actually. It was a customer of mine that saw it on the side of the road, gave me a call, and said this is probably up your alley. So I decided to go have a look at it. It's a bit rough as you can see. There's a piece missing from the bottom. Most of the hardware is missing or broken. The back is completely gone. It was torn off. The drawer slides are pretty much... well they need work. They're non-existent. There used to be a metal slide there. You can see where it would have attached in the back here. So I'm going to have to put some nylon guides in just to help it stay on the rail so it doesn't tip forward like this does. But Kaufman makes excellent furniture. I'm super excited to find this piece. Let's get into it. My name is Angie and I'm the one behind Transcend Furniture Gallery, a business created from a love of vintage furniture and the desire to take broken, dated, and unloved things and turn them into modern treasures that people would love to have in their homes. Sometimes I paint and sometimes I don't, but I always do what I can to save old pieces from the trash. Welcome to my workroom. I almost always start by removing the hardware, putting the little bits in a container so I don't lose them, and these extra pieces I'm just going to set aside for maybe another project because I am going to be changing the hardware on this piece. A few of the drawers need some glue in the dovetail joints. They're quite loose or broken so they'll be getting clamped and glued. I also need to remove the hinges, but none of these screwdrivers would work. I actually had to use a precision screwdriver to get into the tiny little screw to take this off. There's also quite a gap here between the top and the middle supports, so I'm going to be putting some glue in there and clamping that down in the hopes that it will help keep the pieces together. Ah, and who doesn't love carved wooden plaques on furniture? Well, me for one, so it's And there's some on the drawer fronts as well that I'll also be taking off. I'm going to try to salvage them. You never know, I may need them for another piece. For now, these are coming off. I'm just going to gently pry them off. They're basically held on with a tiny bit of glue and a few little brad nail type things, so it comes off fairly easily. Once the plaques are removed, I can get to cleaning this piece. I'm using a heavy duty cleaner and a shop towel to cut through the decades of grime and oils and waxes that are all over the drawer fronts as well as the rest of the piece. Cleaning is definitely part of the prep that you don't want to skip out on. Whatever you're doing for a finish, it's only as good as the surface you're working on, so if you've got built up waxes and oils and sometimes grease if you're dealing with dining tables and chairs, your paint is not going to stick to that, so you need to make sure that you get all that crud off. Now I'm going to flip this piece over and it'll give me better access to that piece that's broken on the side. I can get a good look at what's actually happening there, so there's some nails protruding, some staples that I have to remove. It's not going to be an easy fix, but I'm going to do what I can to save it. I'm just lining this up dry before I put any glue on it to make sure it's going to fit where I need it to go, and then I'll apply the wood glue and clamp it up. I also need to change out the screws that are holding this skirting onto the base. They've come loose, so I'm putting longer screws in to help tighten that up. I'm also going to start patching some of the holes left behind by the hinge screws, as well as some of the larger dings on the drawer fronts and the rest of the cabinet as well. A lot of times that old hardware will leave indents, and you want to make sure that those are filled. And here I'm just spackling the holes left by the brad nails where the plaques were attached. Yeah, so if you're wondering what happened to the glue up and clamp up of this broken piece, my phone didn't record it. True story. But you can see me here using spackle to try to fill in any gaps that remain. I ended up having to put two screws in the bottom just as extra support, and those were countersunk to hide the screw heads, but it seemed to go together quite well and is very sturdy now. I'm going to be painting most of this piece except for the top, so I'm doing a light scuff sanding here just to smooth out any of the finish that was rough or bumpy or where I had patched it. Scuff sanding is where you're using a fairly fine grit sandpaper to just rough up the surface a little bit, just to give your paint something to adhere to. If I was refinishing this down to the bare wood, I'd be using a different approach and it would look a lot different. I'm going to be leaving the top bare wood, so I'm using 100 grit to cut through the old finish, then on to 150 grit to smooth that out, and lastly I'm going to be finishing with a 220 grit. I also have these new poles, but I'm not a fan of the colour, so I'm giving them a light coating of champagne coloured metallic paint. Now I'm just giving everything a quick wipe down so all the sanding dust is gone, because I'm getting ready for paint as well as stain. It felt like I was never going to get there, but I'm finally ready to start painting. This is a custom mixed colour, but it is fusion mineral paint. You never want to go for full coverage on your first coat. It's best to do sort of a light tack coat first and go for a better coverage on your second coat. What happens when you go too thick on your first coat is that sometimes the paint just won't adhere properly. A lot of the fusion paint, in particular the dark colours, they have excellent coverage to begin with, so it looks like I'm going for full coverage here, but if you're up close and looking at it, there are some streaks. But again, that's not something you want to worry about on your first coat. Once my first coat has dried, I'm going to go back in and do my second coat. This piece is only going to need two coats, as the coverage on this paint is spectacular. Quality control is very important. This is Willow, making sure I'm doing a good job. What I'm about to apply here is actually one of my favourite new products. It's called Odie's Oil. It's a fantastic finish for wood. It's got about a 30-day curing time, approximately, and once you reach that full cure, it's highly water-resistant. It's fantastic. It goes on as oil and essentially cures as a hard wax. I really like it also because it's non-toxic and it's food-safe, so you could use it on cutting boards, wooden bowls, anything like that, and you won't have to worry about any harmful or harsh chemicals. While the Odie's Oil is doing its thing on the top there, I'm going to remove the rest of these staples from the back and go ahead and measure to cut a new backboard out. I'm actually going to be using scrap pieces that I have, so there will technically be four pieces going on the back, but that doesn't really matter because it'll be behind the drawers. The only visible part will be the middle section, and I'm actually going to be painting that green. I'm simply attaching these with some small nails and we're good to go. And it's two coats of this bayberry green colour as well. So this Odie's Oil has sat on the top for about an hour and a half. I'm going to wipe it all off now and just let it finish drying. This lemon scented furniture salve is amazing. It smells so good and I love using it on drawers in particular because it helps nourish the wood and just gives a nice light scent to the piece. So one of the great things about Fijian Manure Paint is it actually has a built-in top coat, but sometimes I like to add just a little bit of extra protection and this particular stuff actually will deepen the colour as well, which is a look I'm going for here. It's a combination of hemp oil and beeswax. Adding these little nylon guides to the back of the drawer is going to help keep it attached to the runner when you're pulling the drawer in and out. So instead of tipping and falling forward, it will pull out straight. I'm so close now, I'm super excited, except that I had a little screw up. It's kind of funny because I've done this so many times, but you can still make mistakes. What I forgot to do was determine the position of the new pulls as opposed to the holes that are already there and they don't line up. The pulls would sit in a strange spot, so I'm going to have to mark off new holes, drill them out, patch the old holes, repaint the drawer, reseal the drawer, and add the new hardware. Ah, finally done! Now let's dress her up and take some pretty pictures. If you've enjoyed following along with me on this transformation, please consider subscribing to my channel. I'm hoping to bring more videos, at least one every couple of weeks, and maybe even once a week once things really get moving.