One Drawer´s Tale from Garbage to Gorgeous

I am a huge fan of before afters. I like to read about other people´s projects and I also love to do makeovers. Recycling and trying to reduce waste is also near to my heart. I hate it when good stuff is cast to the refuse dump. This drawer project was about both: a great before after project and rescuing mission for good material. 

I found this drawer near to a garbage bin where it was standing in the rain. The garbage was going to refuse dump. But there was a clever sign saying it was free to take! :) The drawer was wet, a bit broken and missed some minor parts. It is made by Finnish design brand Lundia and is a very good quality wooden drawer. It had been repaired before with glue and paint but was worth getting new life once again.

Here are some of the equipment I used: Glue, saw, filler, primer, coconut paint, wax and sanding machine. The first job was to remove red paint and varnish. I did that with scraper and sanding machine plus some parts with plain sanding paper. Paint was relatively easy to remove and sanding went well.

Then it was time to glue parts together where the drawer was broken. After that I had two boxes that missed parts. I made those parts from wood that I had in storage. Also some corners were damaged and needed wood filler. I built corners with filler and used sanding paper to get the wanted shape. Corner in the picture needed this process twice but I was very happy with the result. Where I had used the filler I put primer on the top to help the coconut paint take to the surface better. This caused tricky white spots but I got those hidden with the paint quite well. With this experience I would recommend to use one layer of the primer all over the surface. Though without primer the coconut paint shows the wood beautifully. When all the construction was done I painted the whole drawer twice with coconut paint (color cinnamon) and used transparent shabby wax on the top. I also made golden decorations with acrylic decoration lacquer.  

I am extremely happy and proud of the result. Look is both modern and traditional. Drawer is easy to style according to current trends and preferring. 

Now that it is winter I wanted to bring out the warmness of the brown with other deep colored elements. Simple Christmas decorations update the look for the coming season. I crocheted covers for plastic baubles from paper yarn and now they match perfectly with glass ornaments. 

I wish this post and drawer makeover will inspire you to think over pieces that are broken or out of date. Nowadays we got so much material to recycle and renovate for new purposes. I don´t claim that it would always be easy task to use second hand material. It takes time and creativity but it is a lot fun :) Even though this was one of the most time consuming projects I have ever had with furniture, it sure was the most motivating. To see a piece of scrap turning into something gorgeous is so inspiring. Also it is one piece less to the refuse dump! The total cost for this project was about 27€ which is not much (I didn´t use whole packages of all products so I counted how many percents I used. For example with wax I will make lots of more projects). 

Have you renovated something that has been in a very bad condition? Or used scrap material in your crafts or other DIY projects? How did you feel about that?

Inspiring weekend to you all!

Sannu