I’ve been keeping an eye on online resell groups and scouting local thrift/junk shops to see if I could pick up any rarities to feather my nest away from home. So far it’s been a lot of junk or items in very poor condition for very high prices. I even scoped out a few actual antique shops with even less success (seriously, I will not pay high value prices for refinished pieces) and in the process I've seen some absolute travesties wearing greedy price tags.
About two weeks ago an antique dresser popped up in the local for sale group.
Very little info was provided and I didn’t like the price so I just saved it and moved along. Once the guy dropped the price by $100, I shot him a message. He’d already had it loaded up for a no show buyer so he came right over to me. I loved it as soon as I saw it.
After I got it back to my place, I spent an entire night researching to identify the piece’s provenance. All the guy knew was that his grandpa had been gifted it back in 1917 and it’s been sitting in his house since he died in 1971. Turns out it’s Eastlake style, likely manufactured between 1870-1890. I’ll admit I capered about a bit in glee after seeing similar pieces for sale for a minimum of double what I paid.
I did a ton of research on how to clean the piece because a simple mild soapy water was not cutting through the layers of century plus old grime. The piece is absolutely filthy, beyond words filth. I got all the bug carcasses, dead spiders, dirt, and webs wiped out from inside and underneath, but the exterior was almost sticky to the touch in spots and other spots were rock hard with years of pledged over grime. So I girded my loins and prepared for battle. I spent the entire evening last night working to strip the piece and got one side and tiny bit of the top done. I was so scared the entire time, worried I was going to ruin it, but after a bit of fudging with the cleaning solution I got it ironed out and have made much larger strides this morning on the top.
Here’s a picture that captures how filthy it is and justifies why I’m risking damage to the piece to get it clean (I am actually stripping it completely and recoating in a beeswax polish for antiques once it arrives).
If you look closely at the edge, you can see where I hadn’t gotten to cleaning the grime off in one spot. I’d left that for perspective to show just how filthy it was.
Now the top is completely stripped and ready for wax. While I wait for my beeswax polish to arrive from the UK, I'm doing a light coating of Minwax Paste to protect the piece until I get the real stuff here. Once it's arrived I'll repeat this process to remove the wax and then give it some proper love.
As I've gotten into deconstructing the piece for cleaning, I've discovered that my initial suspicion that the top piece is not original was absolutely correct. You can actually see where the old top used to be with the drawers pulled out and the wood on top is likely stained birch instead of the walnut on the original piece. I'm also almost 99% certain that the top was damaged at some point and repaired (very well) with a piece of oak because that strip on the front of the top is completely different. The vote is still out on the mirror, but I'm thinking it's original because it matches the wood on the rest of the piece AND would have fit on the smaller, original top. I'm almost certain that the drawers on the upper are the originals, but if it had a marble top, that broke at some point (possibly 1929 because 29 is written on the bottom of one of the upper drawers) and a repair was made using as much of the original piece as possible. Or I could just be telling stories to make it more interesting, who knows, I am a rather imaginative individual. It has been repaired and the upper section is not original, that is a fact, but with the drawers and mirror woods matching the wood of the rest of the dresser I think my theory is not that far fetched.
Regardless, I’m excited to continue this project and can't wait to have an actual dresser in my bedroom. I'll post more pictures as I progress in the project.
1/11/20 update: I’ve finished the dresser and it is now proudly displayed in my room. All that remains is to line the drawers and put my stuff in there.
This was a nail biting process start to finish. I’d really wanted to avoid using TSP because it stripped the wood of everything, patina included, but now that it’s done and a good coat of a high quality wax has been applied, I couldn’t be happier.
I will now proceed to a picture dump.
