Dresser with a broken leg…

I picked up this dresser for only $15!!! The leg was shattered, one of the drawers was completely broken and not usable as is, and it was missing a mirror that once was mounted on the top. I come from a pretty handy family. Between my mom, dad, and grandparents I knew someone would come up with a clever idea and we would be able to fix this dresser good as new. I happily loaded this beat up dresser into my truck and brought it back to my workshop.

This post will be the first in a series. I’ll take you step by step through the process of fixing a broken leg on an old piece of furniture. In the posts to follow I’ll explain how we fixed the broken drawer and show you how we gave it a fancy new paint job.

Here is what the leg looked like when I found this sad looking dresser. Somehow it had been shattered and torn basically in half.

I had some old chairs laying around my workshop. My cousin had given them to me and most of them had cane seats that were holey. I don’t know how to repair cane, so they have been sitting around for a while. The legs of these chairs just so happen to be the perfect size to fit on this dresser. What we decided to do was cut both legs off of the dresser and two legs off of the chair at the exact same length.

Using a power drill we drilled a hole directly in the center of the chair legs and the remaining legs of the dresser. The drill bit we used was just a hair smaller than the wooden dowel that would be placed in it. We filled the holes with a bunch of wood glue and then hammered the dowel down into the new leg. Finally we hammered the new leg onto the dresser.

And her she is with new legs!!!!!