A Vintage Maple Dresser with Numbers

I'm such a sucker for maple. And lately I've been trying to integrate as much wood into my pieces as possible. So when this vintage c.1950 maple dresser showed up on my driveway (literally showed up,  I was out running errands and came home to find it waiting for me), I knew there was the potential to really show off the magnificent solid maple with which this charming dresser is made.

       I sanded all of it except the front base and the original adorably art deco/modernist pulls and stained it a deep chestnut, one of my favorite stain shades for maple. I painted the pulls and base in gold and sealed all the stained surfaces, coat after coat until it was smooth and flawless as glass.

      And then I stepped back from it and decided it was pretty but somehow lacking. So before the final coat of poly I meticulously hand painted numbers onto the drawers, using microsoft word for the fonts, enlarging them to size 72, then referencing my computer screen, drawing the letters in with fine tip sharpie then painting them with my favorite gold oil paint with a teensy little detail brush. It would have been maddeningly boring had I not been listening to the last book of Outlander throughout. Once the gold paint had dried I sanded the drawer fronts with 220 grit sandpaper to soften and smooth the lettering, then applied a final coat of poly to seal the deal. I'm pretty psyched about how this one turned out. It's a little outside the norm and therefore risky, but where's the fun in only ever creating within one's comfort zone!