Long Black Keyhole Dresser

Setting up alerts on CraigsList makes finding furniture a bit easier. Although I very rarely purchase furniture from CraigsLists ads, there is the occasional piece that I just can’t refuse.

Last week I picked up this long dresser. Long dressers are my favorite because they’re so versatile. They can be used in the bedroom as a dresser, in the dining room as a buffet, in the living room as a TV stand, or even as an entryway table to store hats, gloves, and other seasonable items.

This particular long dresser had six large drawers, two hidden drawers, and beautiful hardware that included imitation keyholes on each drawer.

The dresser was slightly damaged on the top – notice the bubbles. The bubbles are most likely caused because the dresser got wet. Perhaps the owner set a glass of water or a hot cup of tea on it.

The bad news was the bubbles meant the dresser was made of MDF. The good news was that I’ve experimented on a few other furniture pieces with this same issue and I was now confident I could repair it.

In the past I tried sanding out these types of bubbles. That doesn’t work very well because the MDF is very hard and doesn’t sand off easily. This time, I used a hand planer to skim the wood down with the razor blade. Then, I smoothed it even with my DeWalt rotary hand sander.

The dresser was then painted with a low lustre black. It’s a Benjamin Moore DTM paint that adheres to every surface I’ve tried (including metal) without the need to prime. Its low lustre finish reminds me of the finishes used by Pottery Barn. It’s not shiny but has just enough sheen to be very smooth and make cleaning easy.

The body of the dresser only needed two coasts of paint. I applied five coats to the top surface to be sure the sanded down areas were adequately covered and smoothed out.