I love antique shopping and sometimes we find a piece of furniture that needs a little restoration. We recently picked up this handmade, antique dresser and I spent a couple days brining it back to it’s former glory. Today I’m going to share how to restore an old wood dresser without using any stain or paint!

What I Look For -How To Tell If Furniture Is Old & Well made

I pay attention to things like the joinery and the construction for the pieces of furniture when I’m trying to tell how old a piece is. The older the piece the more tell tail signs it will have. I look for things like dovetail joints (hand-cut could be even older), unevenness and small variations in the shape and size of the drawers. Anything machine-made will be perfect and symmetrical. Handmade furniture will show signs of wood chisels, a hand plane and even handmade nails.

I also look at the hardware. You can tell a lot from the pulls, hinges, and nails. This dresser had a lot of signs telling me that it was all handmade and very old. Our dresser had …

• Crackling Finish
• Very Old And Most Likely The Original Hardware
• Hand Carved Dovetail Joinery
• Square Head Handmade Nails-Square-head nails were made from late 1700s to mid 1800s.
• Extra Wide Barn Planks -as the back of the dresser that was also covered in really old wallpaper
• A Slight Unevenness in all the cuts/drawers
• Makers Mark
• Antique Hardware with patina
• Hand Plane Tool Marks on all of the bottom of the drawers (could be as old as mid 1800s or even earlier)

Why I Chose To Restore The Dresser (and not leave it as is, paint it, or stain it)

I think this dresser was so pretty just as it was. The patina was a little crackled but not flaking at all and we thought it was just gorgeous! I honestly didn’t plan to restore it, until we got it home and I took a closer look at it.

The top of the dresser was covered in tons of scratches and there were a few dark water rings on the top that looked really bad. The dresser itself was super solid and very well built, but the finish, unfortunately, needed some work.

Methods For Removing The Old Finish

Again, it made me sad to remove the character the patina gave this beautiful dresser. But, the top was just too damaged and it really needed it. Sanding down the piece or using a furniture stripping agent are the two ways to remove a varnish or an old stain.

I chose to remove the old finish with my orbital sander. The scratches were deep enough that they needed to be sanded out and the water rings also needed to be sanded away. Using a furniture stripper would only remove the finish, not the deep scratches.

I always work outside when I work on restoring furniture and I really prefer to sand the furniture whenever I can. If the furniture has really ornate, detailed grooves then I’ll use a furniture stripper, but other than that, I try to keep my use of harsh chemical agents down to almost never.

Getting Started

Before I got started working on the dresser, we moved it outside. Then I removed all the dresser drawer pulls and set them aside to clean later. I just used a small wrench to unscrew the backs of the pulls because they each had a small nut with a square head holding them on.

Then I removed all the drawers and set them down with their fronts facing up (to make them easy to sand down).

Sanding Off The Old Finish

I used my orbital sander with 120 grit sanding disks to remove the finish from the entire base of the dresser and the drawer fronts. Removing the finish was surprisingly easy. Sometimes a finish will gum up the sanding disk really quickly and I wondered if that was going to happen on this project. Thankfully, the finish was so old and dry that it sanded right off without very much effort at all.

Once I had the majority of the old dresser sanded off, I took a piece of sandpaper and folded it in half and just ran it over the tight spots on the decorative top piece to remove the finish in the deep grooves.

Cleaning The Dresser And Prepping To Finish

After the old dresser was all sanded down, it was really filthy. The old wood I sanded off just turned to powder and the inside of the dresser had cobwebs in it from sitting in the antique shop for so long.

First, I wiped it down to remove all the dust and then gave it a good scrub with my homemade household cleaner (with essential oils). I used rags and the cleaner until the wood smelled really good and my rags weren’t getting anything off anymore. Then I left the drawers and dresser base outside in the sun to dry out for a bit.

Testing Out Different Finishes

Over the years, I’ve tried countless stain colors and finishes on different projects, but this one was different. As soon as I saw the raw wood, I was pretty sure I was going to use a furniture oil instead of a stain to finish the dresser.

I tested out two different wood furniture restoring products, Watco Danish Wood Oil in Medium Walnut and Howard Restor-A-Finish in Golden Oak. I also tried a few random stain colors I had left over from other projects just to see if I liked any of them, but I didn’t.

When the samples I tried on the wood dried, they looked very similar in color, but the Howards in Golden Oak had more of a red undertone. The Watco Danish Oil had more of a neutral brown tone and that is the one I decided to use. After doing some research, I think that the Howards product is more for restoring furniture without sanding or stripping it down. The Danish Oil will stain, seal, and protect all in one step.

Using Furniture Oil To Restore An Old Wood Dresser

I really wanted to restore this dresser and get it as close to it’s original color as I could. I decided to go ahead and use the Danish Oil. Applying the danish oil was SO simple! All I needed was rubber gloves, a rag and the danish oil. I poured about a quarter size drop on the cloth and rubbed the danish oil on the wood dresser evenly. Once the body of the dresser was finished, I oiled the fronts and sides of the drawers.

I was curious if the oil would darken the sides of the drawers and make the dovetail less noticeable, but it didn’t. The fronts of the drawers are definitely a different wood species than the sides and bottom on the drawers. I’m really glad it didn’t change the look because I really love the contrast of the fronts and sides of the dovetails have. They’re beautiful!

The manufacturer’s instructions say it’s drying time can be as little as 6 hours. I wanted to make sure it was plenty dry before brining it inside and putting my clothes in it, so I left it in the garage for a couple of days.

The Finished Product

Once the dresser was dry, I moved it into our bedroom with a furniture dolly. I gave the old hardware a good scrubbing, reinstalled them back on the drawers and then spent a few hours sorting our clothing. This dresser is going to give us so much more storage space since my husband and I were sharing a dresser (and we don’t have a closet)! I know, shocking! We built a bed frame with 5 large drawers when we first moved in and between the storage bed and the one dresser, that’s all the clothing storage we’ve had for the past seven years…so it’s going to be wonderful having another dresser!

As I’ve shared before, we have been collecting lost of antique furniture for our new home that we’re currently hand building. Even thought there are a lot more restoration projects ahead of me, this project gave me a restored sense of excitement for all those projects!

The restoration of this old wood dresser was SO much simpler than I had anticipated and I’m happy I didn’t paint it or stain it because it turned out even better than I’d hoped!