dresser turned media stand: phase 1

A few months ago I realized that our current media stand was no longer working for us. It didn’t provide easily accessible storage and because of the design of it everything was constantly dusty and it was a beast to clean. It felt bulky and just wasn’t serving it’s purpose any longer.

Then I stumbled upon this awesome antique buffet. But once we got it into the apartment I didn’t like it at all. I loved the piece but it wasn’t meshing with our style. So we sold that (and made a profit!).

Then finally, I found this dresser on Craigslist. It was 90 minutes away and you bet we did make that trip on a Tuesday night. It was $75, which is more than I’d normally spend on a piece like this, but the bones of it were good, it was solid wood and it was exactly what I was looking for. You can see the top three drawers were already converted to be a media stand.

I went back and forth on what color to paint it. While I wanted a bold color I just couldn’t pull the trigger. The space is so small that I didn’t want it to feel overpowering and I didn’t want it to compete with the darkness of the couch. We went with a soft gray that has some blue/green undertones. We used flat paint that was a paint and primer in one. It’s hard to get a sense of the color in these photos though.

To prep we scrubbed and vacuumed the whole thing.

While cleaning, I found a hornets nest in it, which naturally nearly scared me to death.

We had to fill a few holes and just lightly sand it as there were some paint drips from the previous owner.

Our method for indoor sanding (which I don’t recommend) is to do so near a window, crank the air purifier, one person sands and one person follows with the vacuum.

Currently it has one coat of paint. I need to evaluate tonight if we need a second. Next up is finding drawer pulls – they’re an abnormal width which is why I assume the previous owners had like four thousands knobs on it.

That’s going to take some time and I also want to get baskets for two of the top spaces, and then leave one open for the cable box, etc. So far, I love it and think it’ll be a versatile piece for any space we live in!