Had to pick between painting an old dresser or stripping it down to bare wood

I picked up this beat up solid oak dresser off Facebook Marketplace for $40 a few weeks ago. The finish was all scratched and water stained on top, so I figured I'd try to make it look nice again. At first I was gonna just sand it smooth and paint it white like everyone does. But then I started digging into how nice the wood grain actually was underneath all that damage. So I went with stripping it instead, used Citristrip and spent about 5 hours over two days getting the old varnish off. It came out way better than I expected, that golden oak color with some mineral oil on it looks really warm and natural. Now I'm second guessing if I should have painted it after all since paint hides a lot of sins with dents and scratches. Has anyone else gone back and forth between paint and stain on an older piece, and which way did you end up going?

2 comments

2 Comments

ryanh771mo ago

Wait, you spent 5 hours stripping it but that's rookie numbers. You're tellin' me you didn't once think "I should've just painted this thing" while you were elbow deep in Citristrip goo?

laura_knight541mo ago

@ryanh77 oh man, you're not wrong about the rookie numbers. I had to stop halfway through day one because my arms felt like noodles and I kept dropping the scraper. At one point I just sat there staring at the goopy mess thinking "I could have bought a $20 can of chalk paint and been done in one afternoon." But then I saw a little patch where the grain popped through and I got stubborn about it. Now it's sitting in my dining room with a few dents I couldn't sand out, but honestly the wood looks so much richer than paint would have been. That said, I still catch myself looking at it sideways like "did I really need to do that to myself" lol