My husband is addicted to Craigslist. For the record, he really doesn’t buy anything (usually), but he does make it a habit to look at it daily. One day, he yelled for me to come look at something that he had found, an old dresser. I looked at it and decided that $20 wasn’t a bad price to pay for a dresser, but I would see if the seller was willing to negotiate. You could tell that this dresser needed some help. After contacting the seller, he agreed to $15.
My husband and I hopped into the truck and drove 20 minutes to the middle of nowhere. Now I know what you are thinking, these people are crazy or are going to end up on some 60 Minutes special. I am always cautious, if I do happen to be murdered, I tell my sister where I am going and when so that if she doesn’t hear from me in 1 hour, she can call the police. I also recommend doing business in the police station parking lot (as long as the police are fine with it). Anyway, this dresser was shorter than I had expected and in a lot worse shape than I had thought. The sides were coming apart and there had been mice nesting it at some point, but I had driven all the way out there and I had to bring it home.
I hoped that some of the paint would fall off on my way home, and maybe some did, but not nearly what I had hoped for. It was a complete nightmare to sand. There were so many layers of paint that it took me days to get it all sanded off. I almost gave up. I even made my husband go out and buy a belt sander to help with the really stubborn top section.
I knew this piece was old. (The original owner told me that it was there when he inherited the house and his guess was that it was 100 years old or so.) So I knew I couldn’t paint it again. It should have never been painted in the first place, in my opinion. I wanted to restore it as best as I could. My personal preference would have been to stain it a dark color, almost espresso colored, but my husband suggested that you might want to see more of a wood grain and that they probably had used a lighter stain when it was first made. So I got out of my comfort zone, and used a very light stain that would make the grains pop and make it more natural.
By the time I had stained and polyurethane it, months had passed (thanks winter) and I was really just wanting it to be done. I was tired of looking at it and messing with it, but I still had to put it back together. The joints that used to be glued, had cracked with the years and was only being held together by pressure fitting. Not to worry, I glued it back. Finally, I had just one last task to complete. I had to find handles that would either cover the existing holes, or ones that would fit in the already drilled holes. I ended up finding a cute handle that would cover them and it almost looked antique.
I really wanted to know more about this dresser, since the previous owner didn’t really know anything. I looked at the back of the dresser and found the remnants of a maker’s tag. I was missing half of the tag, “entwater Bedstead Co., Pentwater, Mich.”
Using my mad sleuthing skills, I was able to locate some information on the company that made the dresser. I have never been to Pentwater, Michigan, but it really does have a fascinating history. Click here if you want to learn more about Pentwater. I determined that this particular dresser was built between 1887 when the furniture company was renamed and 1900, the year the factory was destroyed by a fire. If you are interested in learning more about Pentwater, click here for more information.
I really did learn a lot from this project and after it was all said and done, I had a lot of fun. It was definitely a challenge, but everything in life shouldn’t be easy.
