Dressing Up the Dresser (Part 1)

*note: this post was meant to come AGES ago, but I thought the one about our curtains was bigger and snazzier. And, I've only just got the call from the Husband at work that our Interwebz have come back to us like the prodigal son. (And there was much rejoicing)

On Saturday before The Big Move we went to B&Q again and got lots of items for some pet projects I have coming up. The first one I set out to tackle (read: the easiest) was changing out the hardware on our dresser.

Here is what it looked like before:

Disgusted nose-wrinkle.

The too-shiny fake gold just wasn’t doing it for me. I didn’t want anything too brazen or too dark since I like the light pine colour of the dresser and don’t intend to stain it darker any time soon. But I still wanted something slightly darker to anchor the piece, and I wanted something simple. Aside from the edging along the top, there isn’t much fine detail to this piece of furniture.

But then, a few weeks ago when we got the MDF to add shelves to the dresser, I saw these lovely faux-bronze cup handles at B&Q and lurved them.

To be fair here, I’ve totally bitten off my mom’s design bandwagon and copied the handles she got when refinishing her kitchen, just in a different finish.

The first problem with this, though, was that the current handles on the dresser were set much wider than the 64mm required by my (not very) shiny new handles.

So, I dispatched The Husband to help me by using his considerable experience as a mechanical engineer to measure and drill some new holes.

All would have been fine, but for one problem: the fronts to our dresser drawers are 1” thick solid pine. The screws that came with the handles I so desperately lurved were too short! They only just came flush with the drawer front when pushed all the way in. So jump ahead in time to Wednesday: I went to B&Q for a host of other project materials and grabbed what (I thought) Seb told me – in his far greater wisdom – to get: 3m x 30 mm screws. These, I was told, would clear the thickness of the drawer fronts and secure my swanky new handles on. Nope! Mine had pointed ends, not flat ones like the originals (which, I have now learned, are bolts not screws), which may have accounted for their inability to grip the thread of the handles. Boo-hiss. At least I managed to fill the other fitting holes with wood filler and sand everything down.

So at long last, after a full week of stopping and starting, I got my drawer handles on. I still need to do a light coat of staining or something to match the wood filler a bit better, but at least the main objective has been reached.

See the difference that makes? Beautiful.