My Gorgeous Black Thomasville Dressser

I found this vintage Thomasville dresser on my beloved Craigslist for $50. I was really excited to get it. It had everything I look for in a dresser. It was sturdy, large, made of solid wood, had great bones, and it was a name brand. 

This picture's quality is for the birds, and so was this dresser.

There was nothing structurally wrong with it, but it had tons of deep scratches, especially on the top - the results of someone's pet bird making the dresser its home. This dresser even had some bird poop on it. Yuck! 

Like many dressers from the 60s, this one had a thick layer of varnish on the top. I stripped it using Citristrip (more on that in another post) and discovered a beautiful walnut top. I also discovered that the bird scratches, although deep, didn't make it down to the wood. Yeah!

See the gorgeous wood?

I primed it with my trusted Zinsser primer. I wanted this dresser to be durable, so I painted with Benjamin Moore's Advance paint in Black Tar. The thing I love about this paint is that it is a hybrid paint, which means that it goes on like an oil and levels like an oil, but it cleans up like a water-based paint. I will post more about this paint later.

The drawer fronts had lots of crevices and it was a bit tough getting the paint to be perfect. I used sponge brushes to get in the corners and give the fronts a  smoother finish than I could get with a brush. Black is a tricky color because it shows every mistake and imperfection in painting technique an itt took 4 coats to get the even coverage and finish I was looking for. 

I changed out the brass Chippendale hardware for some very cool brass awning pulls I got on ebay for the same price I sold the Chippendale pulls for. They give the dresser that more modern and traditional look I was going for. 

So here she is...