My First Dresser (Part 2)

Work began on my first antique dresser today. The first steps of any project that I work on are cleaning and assessing damages. I broke out the vacuum cleaner and sucked up as much dirt and dust as I could. It was wedged in just about every nook and cranny I found. (There's still more to clean, but I'll tackle that as I progress.) At least there wasn't going to be a mushroom cloud of dust every time I opened up one of the drawers now! I threw away the old newspaper from the 70's that was lining the drawers and sucked out all of the tidbits inside of them as well. You can see the paper and tidbits in the picture below.

Next, I determined what types of structural repairs were needed. The bottom two drawers did not line up and the runners for one of them were loose. I used a hammer and pried them off carefully. Using the drawer as my guide, I re-aligned them and nailed them back into their proper place. Now they fit perfectly.

After that, I went on a You Tube binge and spent about 2 hours watching videos on how to repair damaged wood veneer.

I also got an education as well. Wood veneer is essentially a thin sheet of wood that is glued over top of existing thicker wood. It's a great way to add high-end wood without constructing the entire piece out of that type of wood. For example, you could have oak drawers with mahogany veneer on the front. Make sense?

Some of the veneer was chipped on the drawers and I found chunks missing from the sides of the dresser.

There are a variety of methods to repairing damaged veneer (as I discovered). I chose the easiest - wood filler. Since I was planning on painting over the wood anyway, patching in new pieces of veneer wasn't going to be necessary.

Using a plastic putty knife and my wood filler, I set to work patching the missing chunks.