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There’s nothing like a pending visit from out-of-town guests to kick-start a stalled home-improvement project. In my case, I had been boasting to my parents for months that I was planning to update my childhood dresser. Suddenly, I had just three days to put my swagger into action before they arrived for a long-weekend visit. I fancy myself a pretty handy person, but truth be told, I had never before refinished a piece of furniture.
It crossed my mind—as it had for years—to just junk the 36-year-old set of drawers. But then I remembered my long history with it: My parents purchased it in 1971 from the Montgomery Ward catalog to furnish my pink-shag-carpeted childhood bedroom. Since then, the painted-white dresser had traveled with me to four different states and several homes. It’s not much, but it’s mine, and we’ve been through so much together. My sentiment triggered, I decided to simply repaint the drawer fronts and replace the ugly pulls.
The first thing I did was try to unscrew the existing pulls. After 36 years, you would think that I would have noticed that the pulls are attached with industrial-style rivets instead of screws—but no, I hadn’t. My attack from the inside of the drawers stymied, I tried to pry the handles off the front with a flathead screwdriver. They didn’t move. I finally used force, punching the rivets out with the end of a Phillips head screwdriver and a hammer. Ah, sweet victory! Nope—a new challenge was still in store for me: When I measured the space between the holes to see what size the new pulls would need to be, I discovered that the openings were a nonstandard 2 1/2” apart. (I shake my fists at you, Montgomery Ward circa 1971!)
