The office makeover is nearly complete! Just a couple more little projects.

First and foremost among them was doing something about my husband’s childhood dresser. He had been using it for his clothes, but it wasn’t really very functional any more. It just didn’t fit all of them.

So when we found this Broyhill Brasilia piece at a thrift store last year, it became my dresser.

And this George Nelson for Herman Miller piece that had been my dresser became my husband’s dresser.

Then we had an extra dresser. We contemplated it giving it up, but it holds some sentiment for Doug since it belonged to his grandfather and it’s such a nice compact size that we opted to keep it. In fact, we moved it into the office when our burgeoning tool collection started outgrowing the shelf in the linen closet we had designated.

The problem was, it’s probably over 60 years old. And in that time, it had moved at least six times and gotten pretty dinged up in the process. I contemplated staining it to match the other furniture in the room, but when I actually settled down to start the sanding process, I discovered several cracks that were going to need repair and since I didn’t want to take the entire piece apart to glue panels together, I opted to use wood filler and paint the piece instead.

That’s a lot of wood filler.

You can get tinted wood filler, but this finish was just too far gone for me to fix easily. So paint it was! The first thing I did was take off all the hardware, which is what inspired Monday’s post. Then I filled all the cracks and dents and holes.

No, THAT’S a lot of wood filler.

Next I took everything outside and sanded it down using my orbital sander.

Once all the patches were sanded even and I was sure I had filled all the dents, it was time to bring everything back inside and prime. I used my usual Zinsser Bullseye 1-2-3 Primer with a small foam roller.

The primer gives pretty good coverage, but like all primer, it was a little blotchy. Since the finish had been thin to begin with and I sanded most of it off, I wasn’t worried about much bleed-through so I just did one coat of primer.

Then I waited 24 hours to paint using Benjamin Moore Advance Satin paint in Oxford White, the same color I used for the ceiling and the trim in the room. It’s a nice bright white with blue undertones and I’ve been happy with it so far so I figured no need to mess with success.

This particular paint requires a 24 hour cure time between coats so I waited another 24 hours before applying the second coat. And I waited again overnight before I went to work on adding the hardware.

We had seen some library card catalog type pulls on the Anthropologie website a while ago and both of us loved them. We knew we wanted to use them on something, but they seemed a bit eccentric for the kitchen and bathroom. Since we both liked them, this seemed like the perfect project for them, but unfortunately, Anthropologie had discontinued the pulls in the meantime.

However, a bit of internet sleuthing later and we had some perfectly acceptable substitutes from House of Antique Hardware. Rather than go library all the way since the bottom four drawer really needed two pulls each, we chose the library pulls for the top four drawers and a coordinating cup pull for the bottom four drawers.

The drawers themselves could use some additional organization, but they’re functional. So much better than having one of those garage tool chests hanging around. I still have to add drawer labels so I remember what goes where, but I haven’t gotten to that yet.

So let’s take a look at our checklist, shall we?

• declutter the space so we can see what we’re working with
• knock out a few projects that are in the way (take apart the radio, sell or donate the old games and childhood memorabilia, figure out what to do with a big box of old trophies)
• paint the walls, trim & ceiling
• bring in different shelving, sell off current mismatched shelving
• paint the “tool shed” and the cart
• hang some curtains 
• hang art on the walls
• install a new light fixture
• do something about the awful mirrored closet doors
• add accessories
• add an area rug