After fixing two drawers on our dresser in our bedroom, I apparently was not done yet. It was not the same dresser, nor was it another drawer. My daughter, Fets, was moving into her new home and she was leaving plenty of items for the junk guys.
We resurrected an old dresser for her son about a year ago. Nothing difficult, just fixing some drawer bottoms, a new coat of paint and new drawer knobs. Efiwym, my wife, and I were happy with the results.
Read my blog post, DIY Project – Repairing A Dresser – Can It Be Saved.
That dresser was destined for a new home or a dumpster. As we were talking with our daughter, Elocin, she told us our granddaughter needed a dresser. Fets was okay if we took it and gave it to her sister, so we went and picked it up.
When we got it home we noticed it was a little scuffed up and the paint job needed to be touched up. In the garage it went for a weekend project. As we put the drawers back in that we removed to transport it, there was a gap between the middle drawers. Initially I thought the drawers needed to be in a particular spot, but that was not the case. One of the front rails was missing. It must have fallen out when the drawer was pulled out and tossed in the garbage.
The following weekend, I moved the dresser from its spot by the lawn mower to the middle of the garage. It was time to fix it up. I removed all the drawers to see what I needed to replace. The rail below the missing one was loose so I yanked it out so I could have sample to copy from. I perused my wood pile in the basement that I could use to make a new rail. Efiwym and I are in the process of getting rid of our junk in the basement and a lot of wood was thrown away. I was hoping I still had something I could use.
I found a piece of pine left over from an old early American shelf/coat rack that I dismantled so I could use parts of it to make a new non-early American shelf/coat rack. It had a cut out of a heart in the middle of the piece. I could cut around the heart to get the 1-1/4-inch-wide piece I needed.
Using the other rail as a guide, I created an exact copy using my table saw. I even made the tenons on each end so the rail fit into the mortises on the inside of the dresser side walls. Sometimes I even impress myself.
Even though this dresser was falling apart as the wood was drying out and the joints were coming loose, it was built with some craftsmanship. With some wood glue and re-hammering the pieces to tighten them up, it seems to be holding up well since the last time I repaired it
I tried to dry-fit the new rail, but another rail fell out. So much for craftsmanship. I needed to hold the side walls together, so I got a pipe clamp and 2 pieces of wood to keep the dresser together while the glue dried.
I also pin-nailed the rails in places. I knew the nails in the pin-nailer might be too long, but I thought if I angled the nailer just right the nails would not shoot through the side walls. Well…my efforts to nail on an angle was a miss. Several nails were sticking out the sides. I cut them off with the nippers and hammered them flush with the wood.
I was going to originally just paint the top where a sticker was removed from it. But with the new nail holes and scuffing from the clamp on the side walls, I now needed to paint the whole dresser again. Even touching up the drawers did not work as I could see where I re-painted it. So, the drawer fronts needed to be painted too.
So out came the paint again to re-paint the dresser. In retrospect, I think a fresh coat of paint was the least I could do before handing off the dresser to my granddaughter.
