So, you might have noticed that we bought a couple of new dressers recently. Well, not new, but new to us.

The longer one has ended up in the office and it’s mostly filled with the stuff I need to keep Dog River Biscuit Company running. The tall one was supposed to be Doug’s, but we were feeling lazy and didn’t want to move my George Nelson dresser to the other side of the bed so his clothes are now in my old dresser and my clothes will be in the new one.

I say “will be” because they are currently scattered all over the bedroom while I finished the other project that I thought would be fun to do on this dresser–lining the drawers.

I got the idea from here, but I did it totally differently, mainly because someone in the future may not be so enamored of my choice in paper or might want to fully restore the piece. I try never to do anything irreversible to a vintage piece of furniture, but that’s just my hang-up. You do what’s good for you. The Mod Podge thing was intriguing, just not for me.

I did, however, very much like the idea of putting brightly colored paper inside my drawers. My notion was to have some 1/4″ plywood cut at Lowes (since we don’t have a saw) and then use Easy Tack to cover the inserts with gift wrap. This way it’s possible to take the inserts out at a later date and since I used Easy Tack, removing the paper won’t even be hard since it’s repositionable adhesive. That’s the theory anyway.

The first thing I did was measure the inside of the drawer, subtracting a 1/4″ from each of the dimensions so I could be certain that the inserts would be easy to get in and out. It worked out to 14″ by 36″ for each drawer.

Then I collected my materials.

I already had the Easy Tack left over from another project and I always have a huge stash of gift wrap so all we needed was the plywood inserts.

It was lucky that the lumber cutting guy was having a bad day. He was having a lot of trouble getting his measurements right, but we waited politely and he ended up giving us nine pieces for the price of what would have been seven, even though we really only needed five. I’m sure we’ll find something to do with the extra four. And because we had to wait so long, he didn’t charge us for cutting.

Then it was time lay out some high tech protectant on the floor (newspaper) and get to cutting some gift wrap.

The inserts are 14″ by 36″ so I cut each rectangle of gift wrap to 18″ by 40″ to leave two inches on each side for wrapping.

Unfortunately, we didn’t get a picture of this, but once the gift wrap was cut, I picked up the plywood and sprayed the entire sheet of gift wrap with Easy Tack. Then I gave the edges of the plywood a spray, just to be sure the wrap would stick on the underside. I didn’t have any trouble with the wrapping paper wrinkling, I’d guess because I had it on a flat surface and was using pretty heavy duty gift wrap.

I started folding at the ends, folding the corners into triangles like you would to wrap a present. It worked pretty well, but if I did it again, I might fold the corner over the edge and then fold the sides and the ends over it. It might have created a neater corner, but truly, it looks fine the way it is.

And, of course, a gratuitous puggle picture.

Finally, I slipped the inserts into the drawers. This particular drawer has removable drawer dividers so I just slid those in after it.

Leaving out the trip to the hardware store, the whole process took about two hours. Of course, I started it while I was making granola this morning so I had brief breaks for granola stirring.

All in all, I’m quite pleased with how they turned out. I didn’t have enough of any one wrapping paper to do all the drawers so I chose to do them each in a different paper. I’m definitely liking the final result!

As for the budget break-down:

• Easy Tack (already had, but you can get it at Michaels for $7.99, less with one of their ubiquitous coupons)
• Gift wrap (already had)
• Plywood ($13.36)
• Grand total ($13.36)