 What's up everyone? Today I'm going to show you how I restore this dresser from looking like this To like this Let's check it out What's up everyone? I'm Mitch and you're watching made by Mitch where I show you the things I make and what I learn Making them and do a lot of DIY Woodworking and other kind of projects because I believe that anyone can make so if you're new consider subscribing This dresser was built back in the 1960s by my great-grandfather who was a woodworker It's always really cool going over to my grandparents house and seeing a lot of his work his wood shop is set up in their garage Still and all the lumber and and a lot of the projects and things are in my family still today And so so this project was really cool and to do it had a lot of meaning to me This dresser was passed down to me and my wife last year So I thought it would be really cool to give it a bit of a facelift and bring it back to life The first thing I had to do was take off the old legs and the old hardware of the dresser And I kind of went back and forth whether I wanted to upcycle them and keep them or if I wanted to replace them And I decided to replace them. You'll see what I did later on When all of the hardware was off the dresser I could start sanding off the old finish This was a really long process. I started at 80 grit sandpaper and I just worked my way around the dresser until I got all the finish off And once I got it off the dresser, I moved on to the drawers I actually started sanding this dresser a year ago And I just got busy with a lot of different things and so I put it on the shelf and finally broke it back out to finish this project up I made this paste mixture made of sawdust and glue to fill in some of the cracks and imperfections in the dresser There were a lot of nail holes that had kind of come through There were some cracks where the wood was starting to split and so I used this paste and I went all around the dresser and filled in these spots I have found that this works a lot better than wood filler Mainly because you can get the color to match a lot better You can't even tell that you've done anything once you get done with it So it works out really well And after I got everything filled in I went back in with my 80 grit sandpaper and I just sanded it down Smooth and when you sand glue like this it tends to gum up your sandpaper So be prepared to go through some extra sandpaper out during this process So after repairing some of the places on the dresser itself I took off the back panel and I took all of the nails out of it and then I sanded it down as well Just to kind of repair it a little bit and then and then I went in and reinforced the shelves that the drawers would rest on Some of them were loose and pulling out so I used my crown stapler to reinforce the sides of those Once everything was repaired and functioning the right way I went back and I sanded everything up to 320 grit and this just made a super nice finish On this cherry. I'm so excited about this I didn't show a lot of clips of me sanding because basically it's sanding and it's boring But there were many nights in the shop for me to be sanding this thing down. So it took a long time Next thing I did was get the dresser ready for finish and so I Attached the back also using the crown stapler and then I wiped it off really well with a clean rag and then it was time to apply the finish I decided to use Danish oil for this dresser And it's it's kind of one of my favorite finishes anyways It really made the grain pop on this cherry and I'm so glad that I chose this finish I didn't want something that was gonna make a really thick coating on the furniture I wanted something that would soak into the wood and Danish oil does a really good job of that So I'm so glad I chose it So the drawer pulls and the legs were both going to be black and so I just used a piece of pine one by four And I ripped the width on a table saw and then I used the cross cut sled and I set up a stop block So that way all of my lengths would be exactly the same Once they were cut out I sanded them smooth and then it was time to apply finish to the drawer pulls So I started off using an ebony colored stain for these drawer pulls And I was hoping that the grain would pop through just enough so that I could see it and it would look kind of cool So after applying the first coat of stain I let those dry and then I moved on to installing the legs Originally I was going to try to repurpose the old legs But they were just really rough and I think it would have taken more effort than necessary to try to repurpose them So I decided just to buy new pair of legs I have done a project before where I used a pair of hairpin legs I bought from Amazon So I'll leave a link to my other video as well as these legs if you're interested in using them for a project maybe that you're doing So what I did to install these legs which is pre-drill holes in the bottom of my dresser Just making sure not to go all the way through the wood and then I simply screwed them to the bottom of the dresser using a drill So there's not any hardware or drawer slides for the drawers to ride along So there's just a small shelf so what I did was use some mineral oil just to make it a little easier for the drawers to open and close So the last thing for me to do is get the drawer pulls finished and installed and they were just having a hard time drying so I used a hair dryer to speed it up It's really humid where I live So it was the moisture and the air just made it hard for those to dry But I ended up adding a coat of black paint on these anyways And they look much better painted black than the black stain So the last thing I did was add two coats of shellac on these just to protect the paint from chipping And then it was time to install them So the first thing I did was on the inside of the drawer I used a countersink bit just to make room for the screws And then I used a hot glue gun just to attach the drawer pull to the front of the dresser That way I can kind of level it out see where I needed to be Measure it out and everything and then I went ahead and I pre-drilled into the drawer pulls And make sure when you're doing this that you don't drill too far down and go clear through the drawer pull And then after I did that I could just go in through the back and screw them into place Now I repeated this process for all of the drawers So Well, I hope you enjoyed this project. This is my first restoration project So leave me some feedback in the comments down below I'd love to hear what you thought about it If you like this project check out some of my other project videos where I make all sorts of stuff I'll leave links for those right here and then also don't forget to subscribe Well, that's it for this one. We'll see you in the next project