Whilst looking around for a larger chest of drawers I found this on Facebook market place:

Mahogany chest of drawers
Before Picture: Chest of drawers

Armed with tins of paint and an old curtain pole the plan was to upcycled the drawers as a half-term project for myself and my son. He wanted a set of Lego brick drawers.

  1. We started by removing the original drawer knobs and cutting out a shaped handle, this required a little wood putty to fill the holes left by the original handles.
  2. Then we keying the surface of the wood to ensure the paint would go on smoothly.
  3. We then attached pine button cap plugs using wood glue and panel pins & filled any holes*(see 'hick-ups below).
  4. Next a repetition of sanding, filling, sanding, filling, repeat...finally the surface was smooth enough for painting (I wanted the paint to look clean and neat so we took our time making sure that the surface, plugs and filled areas were sanded). I used Rustin wood gloss and they had the perfect colours for Lego shaded brick colours.

The project took a lot longer than expected, in part because it always take longer when taking the time to teach new skills (my 9yr old got to try out various tools and techniques he had not tried before). Additional the project had a number of *hick-ups. Initially I planned to reuse an old (slightly broken) curtain pole. However, after sanding and cutting the broken end off it became apparent that this would not work. The wood split easily when cutting and cutting 36 x 10mm pieces started to feel like a sisyphean task, especially as I was unsure whether there would be enough of the pole in good enough condition to cut 36.

Finally the finished article, I hope you agree it's pretty cool - at least my 9 yr old thinks so.

A chest of four drawers made to look like Lego bricks. Two small drawers at the top in yellow and blue. A large drawer below in red and a green bottom drawer.
After Picture

Want to read another article about upcycling furniture? Why not check out my post on: How to découpage furniture with wallpaper

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