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Dumpster Diving Dresser

I love dumpster diving. People throw away some really awesome stuff! For instance, check out this dresser that someone left by a dumpster at my boyfriend's condo complex. I was leaving one day and walked past the dumpster and nearly had a heart attack. I quickly pulled my car up and loaded it into the back. Mr. Emily (boyfriend) thinks I'm crazy and came out of his condo to help me with the expression of "God, not again" on his face but do I care? Nope.

So this is what I got for F.R.E.E. I love Free.


Definitely needs some TLC but overall it's a decent dresser so why anyone would throw this out is beyond me. They could have at least sold it for $25 as in on Craiglist! Oh well, their loss is my gain.

I decided to take a risk on this make over. I should stick to only universally liked colors, such as white or black. But I felt adventurous so I decided on Rust-Oleum's Slate Blue Matte. This time I used a white primer before I spray painted it in blue. I would have to say doing a quick once over in the white primer made the main color adhere better. It only took 2 cans of the Slate Blue and maybe 1/4 can of primer that I had left over from the white buffet I sold last week.

As for the knobs - I purchased replacement brushed nickel pulls and knobs from Lowe's. The only downfall of these older dressers is that the holes for the pulls are in sometimes hard to find sizes and sometimes the drawers have different size holes, which makes finding matching knobs a pain in the ass. For instance, with this dresser, the 4 drawer pulls on the top two drawers were 2.5" wide and the bottom 2 pulls on the last drawer were 3" wide. In general 2.5" pulls are hard to find so to find matching pulls in different sizes was going to be difficult. Lowe's only had one option and had pulls in 2.5" and 3 and 1/4".

Since the 3" holes on the bottom were slightly too small I had to measure out a new hole, plug the hole I wasn't using with caulk, sand it down after it dried and spray paint over it a second time. It really didn't take that much time. Maybe an hour or two total from start to finish. And a lot of that time was waiting time while everything dried. Then you just measure out another hole and drill it. Voila, now the bottom holes are larger.

Here are the after photos. It looks much better I think.



Total cost: $28.00
Dresser = Free
Knobs = $20.00
Spray Paint = 2 cans of slate blue at $4.00 each for a total of $8.00

Price on Craigslist: $100.00
Now, let's hope it sells! I may have made a gigantic mistake painting it blue. It may be white come next week.

Update 7/24/12
Sold for $75. I had someone interested in coming over last night to buy it for $100 but they didn't show up. This other woman really wants it but can only afford $75 and can come by tonight. Since I'm nice and really just want this thing out of my living room, I said that's fine. $50 bucks profit buys me a LOT of happy meals.

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