French Provincial wood bleach dresser makeover

Today is a really long post about how I bleached my dresser to give it a much-needed update. There are many tutorials out there already about how to do this and I just wanted to add my 2 cents to it to tell you what worked for me and what I maybe did differently than others.

French Provincial wood bleach dresser makeover

The Drexel French Provincial dresser that I have had in our upstairs hallway for many many years and have given different makeovers, has annoyed me for a long time. Right after I painted it silver when I bought it, the issues started. The silver paint clearly wasn’t meant for furniture and the silver flaked off soon after painting. After that, I added dark gray chalk paint to the dresser but it didn’t withstand the abuse my kids subjected it too.

I didn’t want to buy anything new and work with what I had. The dresser fits the hallway perfectly. So now being mostly stuck at home, I thought the time was finally there to tackle this major project. When I originally painted the dresser, I noticed the wood under it and always wondered what it would look like in a raw state. Recently I also noticed that I was more and more drawn to bleached wooden furniture. The chairs in our living room have bleached legs and I love the combo of the more rustic look with modern elements.

When I was done stripping the dresser, I found a blog post on Pinterest that pictured exactly what I had in my head. Amy of the blog The Coastal Oak gave her french provincial dresser a bleached makeover with leather strap handles. Check out her tutorial to see how she did hers. I did a couple of things differently and I want to tell you why and how in today’s post.

The main differences for my wood bleached dresser makeover are that I didn’t remove all the veneer, I ended up using a wood bleaching kit, I didn’t stain or condition the wood and I made my own leather handles.

Dresser before makeover

…and how bad the paint had started to wear and chip. It wasn’t a good look!

It really was a dumping ground for everything my daughter didn’t want in her room anymore!

Let me show you what I did…

Materials used for the wood bleached dresser makeover

• paint stripper
• protective mask and glasses
• various different paint scrapers and knives (HERE, HERE and HERE)
• rags
• old toothbrush
• white vinegar
• bucket
• two-part wood bleaching kit (I used 2 kits)
• different sanders (Dremmel, Riobi detail sander, palm sander) and different grades of sandpaper from 80 to 220 grit to fit the sanders
• clear matte polycrylic
• spray gun or paintbrush
• tack clothes

Step-by-step instructions

Make sure you have wood under your paint layers and that the paint isn’t lead with a test kit.

Remove dresser hardware and take out the drawers.

Time to strip the wood, so make sure you wear your protective gloves, goggles and mask. Since I had so many layers of paint, I used a heavy-duty chemical stripper brushed onto smaller sections at a time. This was such an awful job, not going to lie. The intricate areas of the legs and drawers made the stripping more difficult. After letting the stripper soak in, I used the old toothbrush to scrub those areas. I had to add stripper several times to the same areas to get everything off.

After stripping you have to sand the wood with different sanders for the appropriate areas. A big palm sander for the large flat areas and the detail sanders for the smaller areas. I always try to test out the sandpaper strength first on a more hidden area since the different type of wood reacts differently to the grid. I had pretty soft wood and mostly sanded with 120 grid.
In Amy’s tutorial, she sands the layers of veneer off to reveal the wood underneath. I chose not to do that because I would have had to sand the drawer veneer off too which would have ruined the molding detail. In order to keep that detail, I decided to keep the veneer. Another reason was that only one odd leg of the dresser also had the soft yellow wood of the veneer.

My favorite detail sanding tip

Below is one of my favorite ways to sand little corners and details. I trace Dremel discs on adhesive-backed sandpaper, stick them together, and attach them to the Dremel disc attachment. Be careful though, this gadget is powerful and if the wood is soft, it can really take off layers of wood quickly.

For other detail areas, you can use abrasive cords,  peel and stick sanding gloves,  sanding detailers, steel wool, and sanding sticks which look like Q-Tips.

How to bleach wood

A lot of other wood bleaching tutorials use standard household bleach and putting the piece out into the sun to dry between coats of bleach just like Amy’s tutorial. When I tried the standard bleach I put it in an old Windex bottle and just sprayed it on the wood evenly.

I found a blog post on Bob Villa that mentions that “Two-part” A/B peroxide-based wood bleaches cause a chemical reaction that can also alter the color of the wood itself which is what I wanted to do. My dresser happened to have so many different types of wood in different colors. Like I mentioned above, the top veneer, drawer veneer, and oddly enough the one leg are very soft and yellow wood. The sides had an orange-tinted wood and the front parts are grayish. I was looking for a bleach that would take the color out of the wood to create a little more cohesive look. (Oxalic acid wood bleach is another option but is considered highly toxic by some, so I didn’t even consider it.)

I tried standard bleach on my dresser and compared it to the results of the bleaching kit. My findings were that the standard bleach ruffed the wood up more as well and that the bleaching kit definitely worked better for what I wanted.

I followed the instructions on the box of the Zinsser wood bleach kit by wiping on Part A first and then Part B with a clean rag. I had used a sponge first but that didn’t work so well.
Make sure to read the instructions! Don’t mix ahead of time. In Bob Villa’s blog post is mentioned to neutralize the wood between bleaching steps but the box doesn’t mention that, so I didn’t either. I literally bleached the heck out of the dresser and feel that placing everything in the sun also helped with the two-part bleaching process. You can tell how the tone changes when the wood is wet. I applied a clear coat too early and it was still very yellow which frustrated me severely because I had to strip those areas again. Sigh!

Here is a photo of the dresser when I applied the varnish too early.

So I stripped it again and bleached some more. Next time I will always test the areas with some water again because that’s how it will look when varnish gets added to the wood.

When I was happy with the results of the numerous coats of two-part bleach, I neutralized the wood by wiping on a 50/50 water and white vinegar mixture onto the entire dresser and letting it dry before moving on.

Here is the dresser before the varnish. If I wouldn’t have to protect the wood from my family, I would have loved to keep it just like this because it looked so pretty. The varnish did change the color again slightly.

Make sure to wipe down the dresser well with a tack cloth. They are my favorite when removing hair, dust, and lint from a piece before the final varnish step.
I use the sprayer to evenly spray light coats of varnish.

Any type of stain or conditioner changes the color of the raw wood towards yellow tones again which I was trying to avoid. So I skipped the steps of conditioning or sealing the wood before applying a clear coat. I did read however that wood pore sealer increases the smooth feeling of wood but is mostly needed for heavily grained woods. Tightly grained wood, such as birch, beech or maple, will not really need a sealer and I’m pretty sure that this dresser was mostly made out of tight-grained wood. I have also seen other blog posts where people skipped these steps.

Now I don’t know if me jumping straight to clear matte Polycrylic after neutralizing the wood will harm the wood in the long run. I dried out the wood with the bleach and didn’t add moisture back. So we’ll see how it will hold up.

Just like Amy’s tutorial, I sealed my wood with Minwax Polycrylic Clear Matte Protective Finish but I used my favorite paint sprayer. It just works so much better than a paintbrush for this runny varnish. Since it is waterbased the clean up of the sprayer is super easy too.

Before settling on the clear matte Polycrylic finish, I tried out a semi-gloss Polycrylic (which you saw in the photo above) and two different clear wax types. I didn’t like any of them.

When working on a piece of furniture like this, I think the hardest part is figuring out what is the right way for you and your piece. There are so many tutorials out there but every piece is unique with different types of wood and what worked for someone else might not work for you. This was definitely a test of my patience but I am glad I didn’t give up in the end and I love the dresser this way again with my grandmother’s painting above it.

I also gave the wall behind it a much needed new coat of paint. The color is called Quail Egg by Valspar and I also started to paint the living room that way which hasn’t gotten any new paint since 2012. Too many holes, dents, and stains everywhere. I’m not sure how I feel about this color in the living room yet though. It is the exact color of my new velvet curtains.

How to decide if you should use household bleach or a two-part wood bleaching kit to lighten your furniture?

After trying both on parts of my dresser and the desk that I started, I believe that if you are happy with the underlying tone/color of your wood then you can definitely use standard household bleach and putting your piece of furniture in the sun while letting it dry.
If like me, you are trying to take out the tone/color then I think you should use the two-part wood bleaching kit. I really liked using it and the results it provided on my dresser.

For hardware, I added my DIY leather drawer pulls to the dresser. You could also use my boho drawer pulls using macrame yarn or my DIY wooden drawer pulls if you don’t like the masculine leather look.

Tschüß,

More of my furniture makeovers

• Super easy fluted molding hack for DIY fluted dresser makeover
• peel and stick grasscloth wallpaper furniture makeover
• 16 painting tips and tricks for kitchen cabinets
• Raising a sofa with furniture casters to turn it into a dining settee bench
• Upholstering a button tufted chaise