The story goes that one of these drawers was my bassinet as an infant. I am now at the age that this family heirloom no longer works as a bed, so I decided to repurpose it as stacked sock holders for my husband. His favorite kind of gift is the gift that fits into our budget and a refurbished dresser, sourced from our very own garage fit the bill. I was on my way to melting his heart and handsomely containing his socks.

Giving credit where credit is due, I did a frantic google search of DIY dressers and tripped on this beauty of a blog complete with instructions for a beautiful tea stain: https://www.justagirlblog.com/industrial-rustic-dresser/.

I purchased wooden knobs and a small can of matte black paint from Lowes and followed Just A Girl's instructions to a "T" (that is, if you don't count the failed result of using wool pads I found under my sink instead of the kind of wool she actually recommended).

In her instructions, she rightly notes that sanding takes a lifetime worth of minutes but the real challenge for me was getting one of the old metal handle knobs off. The bolt holding it in place was stripped and so was all my strength after trying to remove it. Lowe's came through again with a kind employee that cut the bolt off for me. It was my very own Christmas miracle.

Tea staining is a whole new world for me! A very exciting one I might add. Again after a lot of YouTube videos and posts comparing types of wood with tea stain, I ended up with this beautiful finish.

It was so beautiful that I could have stopped there, but I had caught the staining bug and also added a light layer of mahogany color to add mystery. I repeated all the steps for the wooden knobs, added a coat of black matte paint to the face of the drawers and wrapped my husband's socks with his beautiful old dresser made new.