dresser turned desk

Before I start this post I want to apologize for the picture quality. I’ve been taking these pictures from my Blackberry because I’ve been too lazy to charge my camera :P

I started a project last night…I’m turning my brothers old dresser into my moms new desk. I’ve wanted to buy my mom a desk foreverrrrr but I haven’t found “the right one”. You see, my mom is what I like to call a packrat. She saves everything. Every pen, highlighter and piece of paper she can get her hands on.,.so she needs a lot of storage. Right now she has a small wooden desk that annoys me because the keyboard part protrudes out. Usually desks have that sliding keyboard part but not this one, which in my opinion takes up valuable space in her room. And a little desk means no storage, which means a lot of plastic drawer containers….yuck.

My brother had this super falling apart hand-me-down dresser from my aunt, and has been crying for years that he wants a new dresser. He finally bought one and I asked him what he was going to do with the old one. He said “toss it”.

This must have been a gift from God because I’ve been dying to do a before/after project. I’m constantly looking at designsponge.com and figured this would finally be my chance to do something like that. After studying the dresser I concluded that it had good “bones” (I’m not sure what the technical term is but I’m sticking to that). On top of that, the shape was PERFECT. It’s really long and skinny, and there was so much storage potential.

I don’t really have tools, just my grandpa’s old stuff and a generic tool box I bought from Target. I searched high and low in my garage and found an old hand saw. I took out all the drawers and sawed off all the pieces inside that I didn’t need. I also cut out the middle part to make a space for legs. When that was done, I nailed everything just to make it more stable. It’s not wobbly anymore ;) I cut the bottom base too, just the middle of it so the chair can slide all the way in. I was a little nervous about this because I didn’t know if this would weaken the bones but thankfully it didn’t.

Then came the fun part….sanding! I sanded down the dresser until it started looking white and dusty. I had to sand it because the (fake) wood was shiny which meant that the paint wouldn’t be able to hold. 35 minutes later, I wiped everything down with a wet cloth and let it dry.

I swear if you paint anything white it looks smaller. Their white is peoples black ;) lol. Doesn’t it look less clunky?? I loveeeeee it. Today I will be measuring the inside to see how big the plywood shelves should be. This concludes the end of Phase 1.

Tune in for more updates ;)