Up-cycle Project ~ Dresser

Up-cycling has become a huge trend in design in recent years. I have found myself caught in the excitement of taking something old and giving it a new look. I have had a dresser for quite some time now that has been sitting in my shop unused and missing a drawer. Finally, I decided I wanted to make some use of it and up-cycle it to give it a new look to go in my bedroom. I love using the eight Rs: refuse, reduce, reuse, recycle, repair, restore, re-purpose, and redesign. Not only did this project cost me next to nothing because I was reusing resources I already had, but I go a brand new designer looking dresser out of it. I ended up only spending about $10 on the entire project. (More on that to follow.) As a future teacher of Family and Consumer Sciences, I want to teach my students how to be resourceful in so many ways; therefore, I wanted to do this project to showcase one way to be resourceful.

 Here is my dresser before the transformation. I started out by cleaning off the dresser and wiping out each drawer as it was full of dust and cob webs from sitting in the shop for so long. I then took each knob off the drawers to prepare them to be painted. I sanded down the entire dresser, as well as each knob to get off excess paint and rough up the surface so the paint would stick better.

  Where the drawer was missing at the bottom, I decided to make a shelf. I measured and cut an old piece of paneling to put along the bottom of the dresser. Then I spray painted both the dresser and the knobs with black spray paint. I bought the spray paint at Walmart for about $3.

  For the drawers, I bought some fabric at Walmart for $2 per yard. It only took about a yard to do all four drawers. I used spray adhesive I bought at a yard sale for $0.25 to put each piece of cut fabric onto the drawers. Then, around the edges I used the hot glue I had to glue the along the edges down nicely to make sure the fabric wouldn't come off.

The finished project!

When the hot glue had cooled and the paint was dry. I assembled the dresser by putting the handles back onto the drawers. I lined each drawer with some shelf lining that I also bought at a yard sale for $0.50 just to better protect the bottom of the drawers.

I absolutely love the finished project. It was a total transformation! Now the dresser that was sitting in my shop totally useless is a trendy piece of furniture in my bedroom! Best of all, I only spent about $6 and some of my time to completely up-cycle it!