Before and After: This Beat-Up Dresser Is Unrecognizable After a Sleek $75 Redo

Sometimes, the best, most memorable feature of a piece of furniture or decor is the story behind it. In the case of this side table, revamped by furniture flipper Michelle McRae (@shellychicboutique), she said one of the best parts of the process was meeting the man who was getting rid of the old piece and showing him the finished result.

“I sent him pictures the minute I finished!” she recalls. Here’s how she turned the table from a bulky piece seemingly beyond repair into a sleek nightstand.

“The end table was beautiful but very old and a little beat up from age,” Michelle says of the table when she first got it. “I LOVED the moulding but it was veneer covering plastic, and I knew it had to go. I only sell solid wood pieces, so I really could not feel good about refinishing this and leaving the plastic moulding,” she says.

Instead, Michelle removed the veneer detail, then used a lot of wood filler to fill all the holes and imperfections on the body of the cabinet. Next, she sanded the entire piece, vacuumed and cleaned it, then primed it. After scuff sanding again, she painted the entire piece black (Behr’s Limousine Leather). “I know there are a lot of people who do not appreciate painted furniture, but this piece was too far gone to restore,” Michelle says.

Once painted, she added a topcoat finish: Michelle’s go-to mixture is a 85/10/5 ratio of sealer (she uses Minwax’s Polycrylic topcoat), water, and paint, respectively.

Michelle wanted to add back some of the linear detail and texture that was once there, so she used some wood dowels she’d been saving for the right project and attached them with liquid nails to create the design on the cabinet doors. “It was risky,” Michelle says. “I honestly was not sure how it would look, but I love the result!”

To finish the piece, Michelle added sleek angled brass legs and new semicircle cabinet pulls from Amazon. In total, her cool new cabinet cost her about $75. “I love how modern it is,” she says. And the former owner of the piece approved, too! “That’s an amazing transformation. Truly a work of art,” he wrote to Michelle after seeing pictures. Call it another success story for secondhand furniture.

“I love that now someone can enjoy it for another 50 years,” Michelle says.

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