Historic Little Dresser

I will restore, paint, sand and re purpose just about anything.  However this little gem is thus far the oldest piece of furniture I've gotten my hands on to date.  I was really excited when my girlfriend told me it was 1800's.  Probably mid to late century, more towards the later end.  When I picked up the "free" dresser listed as "broken" it was worse off than I thought.  Mr Garden looked a bit skeptical as did I about how much work it would need.  Normally I wont take on a project that needs a bunch of work because it costs me time.  But there was just something about this dresser calling my name.  So with the back panels missing and the drawer guides falling out we picked up all the pieces and loaded them up! Here was the dresser being carefully pieced together for the picture.  Just don't touch it or it will fall apart lol.

It sat in the garage for over a week because I started having serious doubts about restoring the pile of firewood I saw before me. One afternoon Mr Garden and I were just hanging out in the garage finishing another project when he started fiddling around with the dresser. Before I knew it we had it all pulled apart and started putting the jigsaw puzzle back together.

You can see where the previous owner used far too much glue for the drawer bottoms only to not slide them back into the tracks properly.  They will stay this way because the wood is so old and fragile it would split if we tried to take it apart.

Mr Garden scraping old glue out of the joints so we could re-glue and everything would fit flush.

The new back panel we purchased.  Made from MDF. 

Here she is all put back together and sanded, except for the drawers.  It actually made for a pretty unique look.

And now with a few coats of paint and some gentle sanding.