My friend Justin reached out to me and told me he wanted me to upcycle this old dresser he had in his living room. The only directions he gave me was “something green and maybe mid century modern”. I was inspired by a West Elm dresser I found that was really expensive that had these chunky rounded handles, so I thought I would try and replicate that, but in a more ‘Justin’ fashion.

First I started by taking off the existing handles and filling in the holes with wood glue. I also went ahead and filled in the existing line at the bottom in attempt to modernize the look a bit more.

I then went to the hardware store and picked up a piece of knotty pine. I cut out two 40” long pieces and I rounded out the corners by cutting them with my jigsaw. I then grabbed my 120 grit power sander and sanding all the surfaces down to make it look smooth and softer.

Next I cut up the handles I just sanded down to fit to the individual drawers. So I measured out the exact measurements of the pre-existing drawers and marked the wood slots and cut them out with my circle saw.

As a little bit of an extra step, to have the handles protrude out to work as actual handles, I took some scrap wood and cut it down to adhere to the back of all the pieces with some wood glue and a brad nailer. This way, when I attached the handles, I was actually attaching the scrap wood instead.

Before moving on, I decided to sand everything down so that it was all fresh and ready to be painted when I came back to work on it the next day.

Before painting, I decided to attach the handles, so I went in with some screws and nailed them in from the back. You could also add wood glue if you’d like, but I opted out so that Justin can change it if he would like in the future.