Projects

We've been working on a couple dressers since the first part of July (I think we picked up the first one the 7th).  It began when we started thinking about where to put Noah's school stuff that should be here shortly.  We talked about putting in more shelves in our "big" closet...but those are expensive (the shelving system that is) and while they would have worked great for this house, what would happen when we moved - we may not have a place to put it.  So I thought we should repurpose the bookshelf in the boys' room right now for the big closet and school supplies.  Their books could be put in baskets in their room...but that meant we'd need a bit more space for school stuff.  The shelves in the dining room would work great, but are full of their games and such right now.  My solution was to find a dresser for the boys' room - then the big drawer under their bed could house their games and such.  My thought was that the dresser would be more usable longer.  I still wanted Mike to build a library cart - which he did and it looks great right now!  That will be awesome to have our daily stuff on and be able to wheel it into the closet to keep little hands off of it.  He also put a back on it unlike the design we found, that will be covered with cork so we can have our calendar/weather stuff on it. 
Anyway, we found a dresser for $20 - it was long and had 9 drawers.  We were planning to just prime and paint it...but while I was sanding it to rough up the surface I realized it was solid wood.  I was just a tad excited, if we sanded it down and stained it the dresser would definitely grow with the boys more.  Well then while Mike was at work, I found another dresser for $15...it was a chest of drawers, but now I wanted to keep the bigger dresser for Mike and I and put this in the boys' room.  The guy ended up giving it to me for $10 - it needed nobs replaced and a bit of work.  Again, for that price paint would be fine - but again it was solid wood!  SCORE!  So I got busy sanding it down too.  $35 for 2 dressers, $16 in new nobs for them both, and lots of sanding and I think we're going to have some nice dressers!  Mike and I have a really nice dresser right now, but it's a little dresser (3 drawers) and we've been sharing it.  I'm excited for more drawer space!  And I'm excited that the boys' clothes will be a bit more organized in drawers then in their 1 big drawer under the bed (it drives me crazy but I don't think anyone else cares). 
Here's our progress right now for them both, the chest of drawers is ready for staining.  The long dresser is almost there but there were a lot more little details on it.