Refurbishing the World's Stinkiest Dresser- Girls Room Post #3

I sold Bella's dressers before I bought a new one. This may seem ill-advised, but I really had no choice, since I had to raise the money to purchase new stuff. I thought it would be no biggie, and I could go to garage sales or scour Craigslist for something I could redo. What I found was that people on Craigslist are totally delusional about what their old crap is worth. It was damn near impossible to find a dresser for under $200, and that was for something that probably didn't cost $200 to begin with, like, a particle-board out-dated Ikea piece that you can't even refinish. Forget about solid wood, apparently, solid wood furniture is worth its weight in gold to the citizens of Craigslist. 

Finally I found one I could afford and refinish, in Coupland. Coupland, for those of you who have never been there, is a tiny town between Hutto and Elgin which is pretty much adorable. It's all rolling farmland and a post-office and a little white church. I don't know the people who sold me this dresser, but either they have a terrible hoarding problem or they are professional Craigslisters. When we showed up to the address they gave their yard appeared to be sectioned into parts, one part was full of old office furniture, one part was filled with old children's plastic outdoor play-houses and climbing toys. One part was for long-dead appliances. And it smelled. It smelled really, really bad. They were offering the dresser for $25, and when we got there I realized I had my work cut out for me. I really didn't have any other choice though, given that it was wood, and 1/10th the cost of most of the rest of the dressers I'd found.

Oh God, what have I gotten myself into?

When we got it home I examined it more carefully. I realized then that the dresser itself smelled really bad. I guess the smell of the property covered up the smell of the dresser while we were purchasing it. It had names carved into it with ball-point pens and knives, and when I removed the drawers I found that not only were there no failsafe to keep them from just toppling out on a little girl's head, but a mouse or two had been living inside the drawers and the interior was crusted with feces. Yay!

This swiffer is not cutting it.

I was sort of tempted to put it out at the curbside, but then I'd be out $25 and still have no dresser. I thought, I can scrape out all the mouse turds, and then I bet the smell of the wood-stripper and the new finish will cover up the dresser's stank. I put on some rubber gloves, a face-mask and some goggles because I was NOT going to come out of this with tuberculosis or black plague or god knows what horrible illnesses one gets from handling mouse turds. After much scraping, scrubbing, bleaching and cleaning, the dresser still stank.

Seriously? Who sticks gum to their own dresser???

When I went to pull out all the drawers to refinish each, I realized how badly worn the dresser was, I actually had to pry out all the rusty nails and rebuild each drawer from scratch, and one needed a whole new bottom. So I had to go to Home Depot to get some more plywood of the correct thickness, and wood filler so that the nails would have something to be hammered into.

The drawer with its new bottom, and a few dryer
sheets that did no good at removing the stank.

When I went to remove the drawer handles I realized they were affixed with not one screw through the center, but two through each end, this was a problem because I had purchased some absolutely gorgeous drawer pulls that would now need to be centered between the two holes on each drawer, and then I wasn't sure if I could fill and properly cover the original holes. In the end I had to go back to Hobby Lobby to purchase some crown-shaped embellishments to cover the appearance of the holes, even after they were filled, sanded and painted over.

This is what the inside of the drawer looked like when I pried it off its base.

After I used the wood-stripper to remove the old finish and ball-point pen ink, then sanded it down, it still stank. But I soldiered on, white-washing it using several coats of a pickling finish so the wood grain would show through.

Old finish stripped, dresser sanded, drawer pull holes
filled, check, check, check.

It. Still. Stank.

I had to use wood filler to cover the previous owner's carvings.

At this point, I almost admitted defeat. Those people had managed to somehow ingrain their stink into the wood itself. I bet I could have  put the whole shebang in a wood chipper and I'd have ended up with a pile of stinky mulch. I then grabbed the Febreze and used almost a whole can of it, soaking the inside of the drawers and leaving each out to dry in the sun. I also put several dryer-sheets in each drawer, and a bowl of baking soda. After all that, it stank slightly less.

A closeup of the pickling whitewash.

It almost looks useable.

I now had to ghetto-rig a system to keep the drawers from falling out on my daughters' heads, since I know them and I know they'll just yank the drawers out willy-nilly with no regard for their own personal safety. So I got some pink parachute cord and drilled two holes in the back of each drawer, one on the right and one on the left, and then drilled corresponding holes in the back of the dresser itself. I measured the parachute cord into lengths that would allow the drawers to be opened fully without falling out of the dresser, then laced them through the holes and tied sailor's knots in the ends of each. For a final safety measure to ensure the knots didn't come undone, I melted each with a lighter and fused them into a little plasticky-nylon ball.

I had to melt the tip of each string and push it through the hole with a nail.

Once through, I used the same method to push it through the hole in the drawer.

I then knotted each end, and for good measure, tied them together in the back.

Finally, I affixed the beautiful knobs I found at Hobby Lobby, and covered the holes on either side of each knob with a pink princess crown embellishment.

I got these on 50% off sale which Hobby Lobby has literally every week.

I affixed the crown embellishments using silicone sealant which dries clear.

Then, when I got the whole shebang into the girls room I realized, ALL TOGETHER, NOW, it still stank.

Face, meet palm.

I then launched a massive search for some sachets. I looked everydamnwhere, and finally found some at Kirkland's. I let Bella pick out two to start with, since they were pretty potent, and we brought them back and put one in the top and one in the middle. That finally killed the stank enough that I could put my daughter's clothes in there without fear they'd end up smelling like they lived in Oscar the Grouch's trashcan.

This is how far the drawers will pull out with the safety ties on the back.

The finished, albeit STILL EFFING STINKY dresser.

Success! I had finally turned that sow's ear into a silk purse! Was it worth it? Hell to the naw. I will never, ever do that again.