Faking It: DIY Mid Century Dresser

A couple days ago, I posted this grey and white dresser makeover:

Life Designed

In that post, I promised I would have #1 hardware solution and #2 another dresser reveal. So here we go! 

Let's start with the second dresser makeover. I don't have a before picture of it but it was basically the same as the first dresser- just picture it one row taller and with just one column, not two. 

Life Designed

I was just about to paint it grey and white to match the first dresser I painted but stopped short after realizing I wanted to do something different. 

What to do....


I had 11/16" square hemlock trim in my Home Depot bag that I'm going to add to this DIY console table to give it more stability. As soon as I saw it, everything clicked.

This dresser was gonna become a mid century dresser without the price tag!

I kept the existing laminate (ugh...I know!) drawer fronts, painted the top and sides white- it took 3 coats of paint (with primer added to it). 

Now for hardware!

This is where the trim came into play.

I got hemlock trim cut to 20", stained it with MinWax Red Chestnut and planned on using the existing holes to secure it to the drawer- easy!

Life Designed

Buuuut...the stain wasn't an exact match to the drawer. This bothered me. A lot.

Life Designed

If I had gotten gel stain, I would have been tempted to stain the laminate drawers to get a perfect match. I even contemplated buying gel stain. But no! This was getting more complicated than it needed to be. 


Since I had a lot of white paint left over, I decided to paint the "hardware" white. 

Life Designed

Now that's more like it!

Life Designed

And even better, remember the dresser from earlier this week with the terrible plastic pulls? It was the perfect hardware solution for that dresser too. Now the two dressers, although different drawer colours, have something in common. Variety works as long as there is continuity!

Life Designed

I like that one is feminine and the other one is more masculine. Perfect his and her dressers! 

And the best part? $16 for all 10 pulls! Would you rather spend $100+ on hardware or $16 on "hardware"? I vote for $16! 

Perhaps if these were solid wood antique dressers, then I would consider persuading them to drop that kind of cash on hardware- after all, hardware is like jewelry! But sometimes you just gotta fake it til you make it- or in this case, even when you make it. Haha! 


Happy weekend everyone! =)