discerning trash from treasure

Sometimes life gives us lemons, or in our case free dressers. It’s up to us what we decide to do with these gifts. In this furniture flip, we transform two Mid Century Modern dressers into up-to-date treasures. Follow along on this blog or watch the flip in the video above. 

If you’re wanting more information to determine trash from potential treasure, check out our Thrifting 101 blog.

Our MCM Dressers

One of our amazing followers gifted us these two Mid Century Modern dressers and warned us that they were in rough shape. They weren’t wrong. The furniture was covered in dings and chipping veneer, and overall, they needed some serious help. 

Although there was a lot to be done, the furniture had great bones. They’re solid wood, which is ideal. The MCM style is desirable and sells well. To top it off, they were free!  

12 Days of Flipmas

If you haven’t heard yet, last December we started a project called The 12 Days of Flipmas. Every other day we brought you a new furniture makeover on Youtube. Our goal was to spread Christmas cheer and share more beginner-friendly furniture renovations. 

Click here for the full Flipmas playlist and see what we created. This particular furniture flip was from day 5 of Flipmas. 

Disclaimer: 

This article contains affiliate links. I will receive a commission for items purchased through these links at no extra cost to you. I appreciate your support. Please read all labels and follow all manufacturer safety recommendations when working with paints, stains, and other equipment, and wear and use appropriate personal protection equipment. Readers should attempt these projects at their own risk.

The products I Love:

• Dixie Belle White Lightning Cleaner 

• Surfprep Sanding System [code: FFT10]  

• Dixie Belle Silk Mineral Paint {ANCHOR}

• Dixie Belle (BOSS) 

• Lilly Moon Paint Smoky Gel Stain {Tenessee Whiskey} [code: FFT10] 

• Hardware

• Stripwell QCS [code: FFT10] 

• Gold Spray Paint 

• Ryobi Electric Screwdriver 

• Surfprep RAD PADS 

• RZ MASK: Use code FFT10 for 10% off

Remove the hardware

The first step when flipping your potential piece of treasure is to remove the hardware. Taking off your hardware first makes cleaning your furniture even easier. I use this Ryobi Electric Screwdriver to take off drawer pulls and knobs. 

You can also use a manual screwdriver or drill. Just make sure the bit or head of the screwdriver matches the screws you’re working with.

Missing hardware? Eek!

Oh no! We ran into a small snag with this flip. One of the drawers was missing its hardware. Unfortunately, this happens with free furniture sometimes. 

The annoying thing about this particular dresser is that the drawer pulls are not a standard size. This makes it harder to replace the hardware.   

Here’s how to handle missing hardware:

• Reverse image search using Google Lens

• Measure the space between the screw holes to determine the hardware size

• Change out old hardware for new hardware

• Reach out to your furniture community to see if anyone can help

• Fill in the original holes and drill new ones with a more preferred size

FFT Tip: Label your drawers when you take them out so that you put them back in the same spots later on! Not all drawers are the exact same size.

Cleaning

When you find an abandoned piece of furniture, cleaning it is extremely important! In the case of the dresser I’m flipping, I needed to clean it twice since it was so filthy. 

You will need two spray bottles. One bottle for your cleaning mixture and one spray bottle for pure water. You’ll use the water spray bottle to rinse off the remaining residue after cleaning. 

Clean your furniture or else you’ll have a faulty paint finish. This is because the paint will adhere to the dirt and dust on the surface of your piece instead of adhering to the actual furniture. 

But enough dirty talk, click here to hear a perfectly bad joke. ;)

I’m in love with a stripper

Or at least we’ll see if I am. This was a new-to-me product that received rave reviews online! This eco-friendly stripper is called QCS by Stripwell. Use our code FFT10 for 10% off of your purchase.  

Lesson learned: QCS is meant to be used with older finishes. Since it’s not a chemical stripper, it won’t be able to remove the more durable finishes that companies produce now. 

This stripper is best used with pieces of furniture that were finished before the 1970s. 

If you’re working with an older piece of furniture, this may be an excellent option for you. With QCS, you don’t need to wear gloves or other PPE. It can be used indoors or outdoors. It’s a non-toxic finish remover. 

Plan B — Sanding instead of stripping

Well, I learned the hard way that this product isn’t ideal for all finish removal projects. Because I still despise chemical paint strippers, I’ve chosen another method for paint removal. That’s good old-fashioned sanding! 

I used my Surfprep Sanding System to remove the finish. Use the code FFT10 for 10% off if you’re ready to own this incredible sanding system. I went over both dressers to first remove the finish.

Then, I scuff-sanded everything so that the paint would adhere. This was a step I needed to take either way.

Don’t forget the legs! I removed the legs of these dressers. They also had old varnish on them. To strip these down, I used my SurfPrep and a medium grit foam pad.

It’s time to design — repairing peeling veneer

After both dressers were fully scuff-sanded, it was time for repairs. There were places where the edge banding was missing or cracked on both dressers. I knew I needed to fix the edges in order to accomplish a more polished finish overall.

To make these repairs, I used wood filler to fill in the open spaces along the edges. I prefer a wood filler that starts out as a pink color and then changes to another shade when it’s dry.

I wanted to try to save as much of the wood on these dressers as possible. I was going for the two-toned wood look with these pieces. In order to achieve this, I taped off where I wanted to keep the raw wood.

FFT Tip: To save time, tape off and prep your pieces while you wait for other stages to dry.

Once the filler dries, you’ll sand down these newly-filled spots to be smooth with the rest of the banding. I used 220 grit to make sure I didn’t sand down too much. The next steps to follow are priming and then painting. We’re nearly there.

Primetime

The purpose of priming is to prevent wood bleed through after painting. This can happen when there is exposed wood. The tannins from the wood stain through the paint and create an undesirable look. We are painting these black so we may not see the bleed-through, however, priming with ultimately protect the wood.

The more you protect the wood, the longer your furniture will last!

I used Dixie Belle (BOSS) to prime my dressers. Use the code FFT10 for 10% off, if you opt to use the same primer. This product is a water-based primer and stain-blocking. This will ensure that none of the stain or tannins pop through.

Painting the dressers

I decided to go with a beautiful black shade for these dressers. This all-in-one Silk Mineral Paint by Dixie Belle in the color anchor is awesome because it includes a bonding primer. It also has a topcoat built in so I won’t need to apply an additional topcoat to these.

Before applying the paint, use your Surfprep RAD PADS to lightly go over all freshly primed sides of your furniture. I used the very fine grit red pad to smooth everything over. Do this between each coat if you are using multiple coats of paint.

Pulling off the two-tone look

I wanted to get a two-toned look with these dressers. This means some parts are painted and some parts I left the wood grain exposed. I stained the unpainted wood with Lilly Moon Paint Smoky Gel Stain {Tenessee Whiskey}. Use our code FFT10 to get 10% off your order.

Use a lint-free cloth to apply and distribute the gel stain. This particular stain is simple to use. The main thing to be careful about is matching the tone for all surfaces. It’s easy to get carried away and add too much, achieving a darker color in some areas than others.

Solving the hardware conundrum

Remember, we had a missing drawer pull on one of the dressers. I wasn’t able to find the same pulls to replace them. Also, the size of these pulls was extremely rare.

To fix this, I chose to switch the hardware to these knobs.

Switching from pulls to knobs required me to drill all new holes in each drawer. Once I received the hardware, I used a vintage gold spray paint color to spray all of the hardware down so everything matched. Luckily, the new hardware covered the old holes so I didn’t need to fill them.

The final reveal

We’re ecstatic with how these dressers came out! The original pieces were, let’s be honest, trashed. There was old paint on them, scratches, and general signs of abandonment. I’m pleased to see how these came back to life.

Since we got these for free, we saved a lot on cost. We made a hefty profit on these dressers. Thanks again to our follower for the kind donation.

• $700 SOLD +$300 Delivery Fee

• - $55 Materials

• - $95 Gas

• Total Profit = $ 850

JOIN US

Are you trying to earn an extra income to pay off a debt or save up for something special? Check out our Flipping Furniture for Profits Course & Coaching Program. We will take you step by step through the EXACT method of flipping furniture that I used to pay off $25,00 worth of student loan debt!

This is an interactive course full of helpful information to set you up for success! Learn more about how to get started here. 🎈

Happy to know you, 

-Lauren & Neiman