How To Fix A Dresser With Wood Veneer That Is Too Far Gone

When you buy, paint and sell furniture, the point is to make a little bit of profit, right? Well, this is a story about how I got hosed on a furniture flip lol. Okay…maybe “hosed” is an exaggeration. But by the time I was finished with it, there was not nearly enough profit to consider this one “worth it.”

A furniture picker from out of state sent me a dark, grainy cell phone picture of this dresser. I saw that it was campaign style and had faux bamboo details. So without asking any questions, I enthusiastically told the picker that yes, I’d take it!

Once it arrived to me, I immediately regretted it as this was one dresser I should’ve never bought. Even though the lines and style are so beautiful, the wood was in really bad shape. It looked like it had sat on someone’s porch in the elements for a while. The top was in the worst condition and was badly water damaged. In this post, I’ll show you how to fix a dresser with wood veneer that is too far gone.

Removing Ruined Veneer

So here’s the reason I deemed this dresser not worth it, the wood veneer was glued to particle board! This was the first time I’d run into this situation. With the furniture I’ve had experience with in the past, the veneer has been glued to solid wood or plywood. In those situations, you can remove the damaged veneer then simply apply a new sheet of veneer to the wood underneath. Or sometimes, you can just paint over the wood underneath the veneer once its removed.

But in this dresser’s situation, the water had penetrated the wood veneer and seeped into the particle board underneath and made it swell. And once particle board gets wet and swells, it doesn’t shrink back. It stays swelled up and essentially ruins it. We were able to peel away the layer of veneer using metal bladed putty knives. As you can see from the photo above, it came off splinter by splinter lol.

After The Veneer Is Removed

After we had all of the veneer removed, we sanded the heck out of the swelled up particle board. You can see in the photo below that the particle board was surrounded by an edge of solid wood. One of our biggest problems was that the particle board was raised higher than that solid wood edge since it swelled up. It was imperative that we sanded the particle board down far enough that it was lower than the solid wood edging that surrounded it. Our goal was to have a perfectly flat and even surface. Anyone still reading this? Are you asleep yet, lol?

It would’ve been so fantastic if we could have simply applied a new piece of veneer on this sucker then painted over it. But the particle board was so uneven, there was no way to get it to stick properly and be flat enough for our high gloss paint.

Making The Top Flat And Even

In order to effectively cover the particle board and flatten the surface in preparation for our glossy paint, I applied Bondo to the dresser top. But I had to do it in a very careful and specific way as to not make a total nightmare when it came time to sand it.

Using Bondo for smaller areas is pretty easy, but when using Bondo on a large surface area can be super tricky. It would be very easy to have major inconsistencies in the thickness of the Bondo you’re applying.

In order for me to apply the Bondo in a somewhat even thickness over the expanse of surface area, I pin nailed a strip of 1/4″ plywood to the backside of the dresser to act as a guide for trowel

Using a long trowel and the edges as guides allowed me to apply the Bondo as evenly as I could. There’s absolutely no way I could’ve done this by using a smaller putty knife or plastic spreader!

Sanding The Bondo

Sanding Bondo is about as fun as hitting your finger with a hammer, honestly. I used a pneumatic longboard sander (also known as a straight line sander) with sandpaper grits beginning with 40 and working up to 60 then 80. This was just to knock down the ridges and highest points of the Bondo.

I applied Bondo Spot and Glazing putty after the bulk of the ridges were flattened out. This was to help fill in the low spots. The red Spot and Glazing putty is SO much easier to work with that the gray Bondo.

I squeezed a liberal entire tube amount onto the dresser top, then spread it out evenly with the trowel just like I showed before. Then sanded it again.

At this point, my dresser top was much better. I won’t say it was dead flat by any means…but it was good enough for me to finally move onto priming!

Priming

It’s at this very moment in writing this post that I realize I have no photos of priming or painting this dresser. Ooops.

For primer, I used Omni MP282 High Build 2K Primer Surfacer (it’s automotive primer, more details can be found in this post)

We sprayed three coats of this primer. Then sanded everything beginning with 320 grit and worked our way up to 600 grit.

Painting

The client who bought this dresser requested a pure, bright white with no gray or yellow undertones. I searched through the color chips at my local automotive paint store to find the best choice. It’s slightly annoying that their colors don’t have names, only a number. I literally have no idea what the color is😬

The After

Apparently I couldn’t decide between photos with run versus without rug lol 🤷🏼‍♀️

If you love high gloss furniture and want to see more…you’ve come to the right place! Click on the photos below to see more glossy goodness:)

xo Kayla