A $10 Antique Dresser

This one was bad. Bad bad bad. Let's start with the spiders. There's always this moment when I'm buying antique furniture, when it gets flipped over to be placed on its top in the back of my truck, and suddenly ARACHNOPHOBIA. Thousands of pieces of furniture and the shock and drop in my stomach never goes away. I HATE spiders.
        It was spidery and the veneer was a disaster. Someone had put big ugly white casters on it, and the drawer bottoms in the two larger drawers had come out of their slots and were dragging hard against the drawer stops, making them all but impossible to open and close. It had a handful of non original pulls, and the top was nothing but water marks, rings, chips, and bubbling. Basically, It had every problem.
          But at $10 it was worth saving.
          I've walked you through the step by step process to repairing chipped veneer and removing veneer tops before so I won't labor the point, but it was many hours of work to get this gal back on her feet and ready for the surface work (the fun part). I had an glorious 19th century solid oak dresser mirror stored away and I knew it would be perfect for this piece, so after removing the damaged veneer top and refinishing the poplar below and painting the case in a soft blue I added the mirror, painted to match. I kept some of the existing drawer pulls, just for the top drawers, and complimented them with salvaged antique pulls for the lower drawers. I removed the casters distressed and sealed the paint and bing, bang, boom, the dresser is a lovely once more.