Our “new” buffet

My sweet in-laws gave us this dresser over a year ago – someone had given it to them, and we told them we’d love to refinish it and use it as a buffet for our dining room. The drawers are nice and wide and would be perfect to hold dishes and place mats and all of our fancy serving ware. 
And then this beautiful dresser sat in our garage for over a year. First I was sick, then we put our rent house on the market, then I hit my busy season with work, and next thing we knew, it was the dead of winter and much too cold to tackle a garage project.

But last weekend after lazily watching a Saturday morning movie with Mr. Right as we recovered from our California trip, I got a wild hair to work on the dresser.

It’s really a fabulous piece of furniture – look at those curves! This 300 pound solid wood beauty had lived in a little girl’s bedroom for many years and been well-loved. It was time for her to get a makeover. 
First, I sanded off the rough edges and scratches with our electric sander. Because of the primer we chose, we didn’t have to completely remove the finish, just make it smooth. 

We decided to use spray paint on this project, and I’m so glad we did – it was a total dream! Take it from a girl who has used a paint brush on all of my previous furniture projects – this was SO MUCH FASTER.
First, we used KILZ primer in white to prime it for painting. My only complaint is that it went on a little rougher than I would have liked.

While the primer was drying I ran to the grocery store then stopped by the local hardware store to pick up white high gloss spray paint. By the time I got home an hour later, the primer was dry and we were ready for round two – painting.

I used 2-3 coats of spray paint, which went on really smoothly. We had a few drips, but nothing we couldn’t fix. The whole thing took about 30 minutes, as opposed to several hours of painting with a brush. I will forever be a spray paint kind of girl.

We debated about what type of hardware we would buy (and since we had 12 drawers, we knew that was going to be pretty expensive), but my interior designer sister suggested we just spray paint the original hardware black since it’s still an interesting shape.  

And five minutes and one can of spray paint later, we had black hardware that looked brand-new.

Then came the hardest part – we had to let it dry overnight. I was so tempted to go ahead and move it into the house because I couldn’t wait to see how it would look in our dining room – but I was good and my patience was rewarded… everything dried perfectly.
The next day Mr. Right and I carried it into the dining room and I installed all of the hardware and then added padded white drawer liners to protect our dishes from sitting directly on the wood. Now our beloved buffet houses our china, chargers, place mats and other accessories, and I love it because everything has its own compartment. It’s a disorganized organized girl’s dream!

And of course, we left a little note to remember our project.

2 Comments

  1. […] on this side of the room is repurposed. The mirror was free and came with the buffet we refinished in 2012. The dresser/changing table was a hand-me-down from my in-laws (we’re […]

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  2. […] out a more permanent plan. This happens to be in our dining room (we got that dresser for free and refinished it ourselves to turn it into a buffet that stores most of my […]

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