The Dresser Project

So most of the furnishings for this house have come from second hand sources. We obviously prefer to use antiques and salvaged items to outfit all of our houses and to make them stand out, and to provide the unique ambience that comes with an old house.

While looking for bedroom furniture, I found this gorgeous Empire style dresser on a marketplace site. I loved everything about it as soon as I saw it. The price was right so I jumped on it. When I got it, I realized the iron pulls on it were not original, although I id not hate them. But I decided that I wanted to try to bring it back to a more original look. The dresser is huge, a beautiful flame mahogany piece circa 1860, earlier than the house which was built in 1886, but a good fit for the large bedroom I was trying to outfit. 

I removed the newer iron drawer pulls and found myself with 5 holes that they had been hiding, under EACH drawer pull. So in the 160+ years of its existence, the pulls had been changed several times. My guess is that the original pulls had been pressed glass knobs, of the Sandwich glass style, although other companies were making them too. These were probably broken, and then replaced with a bail style pull, not once but twice at least. I decided to try to find some glass knobs that would be an appropriate size for this giant dresser. I checked our inventory and I had some nice sets but not enough of them for 4 drawers. Sets of 8 are very hard to find. But I persisted, and found a set on Ebay that seemed perfect. At $80 for the set of 8 I felt like I hit the jackpot. One was badly repaired but I decided to hide it on the bottom drawer.

I used mahogany Restor-A-Finish on the dresser to brighten up the dull finish. I finished it up with Goddard's Cabinet Maker's Wax. Then came the fun part. Time to try to disguise the 4 extra holes from each pull. As I mentioned, I thought the original pulls had been knobs, and there was a hole in the center of the mess of other holes. I used that one for the glass knobs and was left with 4 other holes to fill. I used wood filler and let it dry overnight.

 The next day, I got out my acrylic paints and selected all of the colors in the range of tones that matched the flame mahogany finish on the dresser. Then it was just a matter of trial and error to cover the wood filler with tones that came close to matching the wood grain color around the filled holes. It's not a difficult project, and it can be easily spotted if you look closely. But for my purposes it worked fine. 

I applied another coat of Goddard's after the paint dried, put the antique glass knobs back on there and stepped back, squinted a bit, dimmed the lights a little, and was pleased with my work.