Old Painted Oak Dresser Makeover

Dresser Before Stripping

Dresser After Stripping

Every once in a while we come across a stunning piece of furniture in a corner of a basement at an estate sale, hiding its beauty to the world underneath a thick layer of dust and in this case, paint. Likely this dresser was painted well over fifty years ago and hadn't been touched since. We spotted it and being it was the last day of the estate sale, bought it for an astonishing price of $7.50. We were thrilled as we could see the great "bones" of this elegant beauty buried somewhere beneath all that paint, which surely was charming at the time, but had long lost its appeal.


The first step was to totally hand strip that old paint. The top and trim was painted a medium blue and the rest of the dresser was white, or rather, what was once white. We knew that the dresser was likely beautiful underneath, but with many previous incidents with old furniture, you never really know what you have until you remove all those paint layers. What we didn't know, was that under all that paint. was an amazing, gorgeous tiger oak dresser! Even the sides of the drawers were made of oak, which is rare since for the sides, normally a lesser wood, like pine, is chosen. This indicates true craftsmanship as well as great materials used on this antique beauty.

Once the stripping was complete and the oak revealed, we selected a medium color stain to enhance the wood's natural grain and the results were outstanding. Instead of replacing the knobs with an updated, modern knob, we decided to clean up and stain the originals which were the correct choice. The original keyhole covers were also covered with paint and once they were stripped, we cleaned them up with brass polish, which made them shine like new. They were converted from invisible to the "jewelry" of the dresser. See for yourself from the "before" and "after" photos the incredible transformation that this dresser had taken with a lot of TLC. As always, we appreciate your comments!