Rehabbing Furniture for Kids’ Rooms

After checking out some unfinished furniture stores and visiting several used furniture stores for a potential changing table for our baby, we found a long, waist high dresser that needed a little TLC for about $100. With the help of a sander, some paint and some new extra large knobs, we had ourselves a piece of furniture that friends thought was a store bought piece from a boutique. We’ve since “rehabbed” another dresser/changing table for our second child.The quick and dirty on rehabbing or refinishing:

• Be picky and patient: we walked the aisles of a number of used furniture stores before finding what we wanted.
• Look for what something can become, not what it is currently: don’t limit yourself to looking a dresser, if that’s what you want. You might be able to make a kitchen hutch into one with the right tweaks. You can remove hardware, raise or lower legs, sand down or paint over things.
• Avoid items with heavy shellacs or varnishes - the varnish is very difficult to remove and they don’t paint over well.
• Don’t worry about fancy: dovetail and mortise-tenon joinery is beautiful and the mark of true craftsmanship in woodworking, but you’re going to paint over this more than likely and no one will know the difference.
• Buy good quality paint: Since you don’t need a ton of it, pay a little more for the good stuff.
• Splurge on the details: big, oversized knobs or pulls with fancy children’s decorations are expensive, but worth it.

Tools/Equipment:

• Orbital sander: If you don’t already have one, it’s worth the $40-60 bucks for speed and ease of use. (Plus, you’ll find a million other uses for it as well.) If the piece is made of wood and doesn’t have a thick shellac or varnish, you can get away with sanding it down prior to painting. Start with a 60-100 grit coarse sand paper and finish with extra fine 220 grit. (An orbital sander is just a handheld sander (we like circular) that plugs into an outlet and uses sandpaper that ‘velcros’ onto it.)
• Paint: Benjamin Moore and Sherwin Williams both have very good paints.
• Hardware/Knobs/Pulls: This is where to splurge since the details are what “pop”. Link to store where we got pulls. Rockler is a woodworking supply company with a good selection of pulls and other hardware.