Antique or old furniture are some of our favorite pieces to re-do.

We always look for a piece that has some beautiful character and good bones. Have you noticed new furniture is just not made the way it used to be? This dresser was an old piece, made great, had some very cute details to it, but just needed a little bit of love!

Even though we absolutely love the old items they can sometimes be very unpredictable, which can cause some problems! For this particular piece, we found out that the top was not going to be able to be sanded down since it had some kind of veneer on it. * Wah, wah* There goes having a stained top look…

…Just kidding!

Previously, we found out that gel stain would work over a laminate topped table, so we decided to try the same idea with this top! Our client wanted a stained top look with white everywhere else. So we tried it!

This post contains affiliate links for your convenience in finding products we use and love. See our full disclosure here. 

We applied this colored gel stain to the top. Three coats were applied and wiped back. Gel stain dries differently especially since it wasn’t getting soaked into real wood. So when we wiped it back, it actually gave a nice real-wood look! We loved it!


Another problem we have encountered with old pieces is that unseen stains tend to bleed through the paint. We have come to the conclusion that it happens a lot when you have a reddish tinted wood, and also when you sand it down. So when color started to bleed through our white paint, we stopped painting immediately and had to shellac the entire dresser before continuing. Shellac is very easy to apply, it is just very smelly – so make sure to have adequate ventilation.

Once that problem was fixed, we were able to get the beautiful white paint on, distressed the ornate details very subtly and sealed the dresser with wax.

And this antique chest of drawers turned out just perfectly! Its frustrating sometimes when unforeseen problems occur, but don’t ever give up! There is always something that can be done. And one good thing with paint, if you end up not liking the result, you can always paint over it!

Lucky for us, we loved the result, and so did our client 🙂 A very happy ending for this previously outdated dresser!

Sharing with: Fridays Furniture Fix

---

---