There it was, next to some old tires and a busted barbecue: a sad skeleton of a dresser. Out here in Richmond, California, where I rent a workshop, things like this show up on the curb all the time. I imagined it was once someone’s bedroom showpiece, a formerly prized possession now worn down and abandoned. Could something be done with this? Though pretty shabby from its street time, the face and frame were solid oak, and I liked the little decorative details—trés grandma. I decided to carry it back to the shop for before some transformation.

The Inspiration

I let the dresser hang out in the corner of my shop for a few weeks, waiting for an idea to come. I kept seeing it as a small house, rather than as a piece of furniture, so I decided to approach this project like a home remodel.

I wanted to maintain the grandmotherly exterior, but the inside was too compartmentalized. Why not go with a modern open floor plan for this little fixer-upper? With some adjustable shelves and sliding doors, this could make an excellent lit display case or A/V cabinet. Maybe even a flat-screen TV console.

Materials and Construction

The first order of business was to gut the case. Dismantling a piece is a good way to learn how it’s built. I replaced the dresser’s back with new plywood, reinforcing it to support metal shelf standards. I recut the old “guts” and used them as corner braces. Everything got new screws and wood glue. A bit of putty here and there covered all the cracks and seams. Now the opened-up structure was much stronger than the original, even with a lot less material.

I wanted the final piece to feel monolithic, with one color that would pull all the elements together. Cobalt blue—like the night sky—seemed right for a media cabinet. I primed the case with pigmented shellac, sanded it, and then applied artist acrylic paint with an HVLP (high-volume low-pressure) spray system (a brush would work just as well). After a couple of coats, I sealed the paint with brushed-on polyurethane. For the top, I wanted something more special, so I added a high-gloss resin pour over the cobalt paint. The sheen looks almost like water and is extremely durable. Shiny = new!

For the doors, I ordered some quarter-inch translucent blue Plexiglas from my local plastics retailer. Some stores will cut these sheets to size for you. To gussy things up and suggest more of a stereo cabinet, I cut a speaker hole pattern into the Plexi. To do this, I made a plywood “template” on the drill press, which I used as a guide by clamping it onto the Plexi. I drilled starter holes in the Plexi and then used a flush-trim router bit (which has a guide bearing that rides on the template) to copy the shapes of the holes from the template to the Plexi.

I made the sliding tracks for the door on my table saw, but using inexpensive, off-the-shelf track hardware will produce the same result. On the inside, I attached metal shelf standards to the plywood back and then the shelves, which I cut from scrap wood. The finishing touch was to add thin fluorescent lights tucked just inside the top of the piece so my “house” would glow from the inside. The remodel was now complete and ready for move-in (my stereo will be very happy in its new home). Could this be the grandma furniture of the future? Perhaps. I just hope it doesn’t end up back on the street in 30 years.