Painted Herringbone Dresser

This antique dresser was updated with milk paint, a herringbone pattern drawer, and a natural wood top.

Painting a herringbone dresser is an easy way to give some interest to a piece of furniture while still revealing some of the natural wood. This post will give the steps on how to paint a herringbone pattern on furniture AND reveal some hidden secrets this antique cabinet was hiding.

I found this beautiful antique cabinet at an estate sale and instantly fell in love. The top was pretty bad shape, but all in all this little cabinet had solid bones and could easily be brought back to life. For those of you that hate painted furniture, I would suggest you stop reading this post right here.

Update: This was published 8 years ago, and looking back, I would refinish this piece differently today. Honestly, I would probably strip down the wood and highlight its natural beauty. However, I will say that this is still one of my favorite painted furniture pieces to date. I wish I had kept it, primarily for a couple of unique aspects that made this cabinet special.

I decided to use Old Fashioned Milk Paint and mix up a custom color. One thing I love about milk paint is how easy it is to create custom colors. If you’d like to read everything else you might ever need to know about milk paint, you can read the full post here: All About Milk Paint

For this specific piece, I combined five parts Oyster White with one part Slate. The end result is a tad bit whiter that I originally envisioned (see how the color in the cup was a bit deceiving?) but I still like the slight blue-gray tone.  I also added bonding agent because I didn’t want it to chip.  There were some parts of the finish that just weren’t that appealing, and I didn’t want those to show through.

How to Paint a Herringbone Pattern

To paint the herringbone pattern, I used my favorite brand of painter’s tape, Frog Tape. First, I measured and found the middle line on the drawer height. I kept the lines the thickness of a piece of tape, and then used another piece to space out the next stripe. I painted the top lines first, let them dry completely, and then did the same process for the bottom of the drawer.

To be sure that there was absolutely no bleed through and the lines were crisp, I added one more step. The trick is to first paint a layer of clear shellac, let it dry, and then paint over that with the paint. The only thing that will bleed under the tape is the clear shellac, which you will never see! You can read my pull post on painting perfectly clean lines here.

I love how the natural wood shows through the herringbone stripes.

Refinished Natural Wood Top

To refinish the top, I stripped it down with my favorite furniture stripper. After cleaning and sanding, I stained it with walnut stain to try to match the original color of the drawers (which I did not strip down). Then, I sealed it with tung oil. If you’re interested in a full tutorial on how to strip wood furniture, the linked post will help.

Antique Touches

The two bottom knobs on this cabinet were the original glass knobs. I thought this was my favorite part of the dresser, until I opened up the top drawer!

When I got the dresser home and opened the top drawer with a screwdriver, I found that someone had lined the top drawer with an old newspaper.  The Chicago Daily News from June 24, 1944.  It had news headlines about the war.  There was not a chance I was going to throw that away. 

I used Mod Podge to stick it right to the bottom of the drawer.  Although this dresser was definitely made before 1944, it’s so neat to think that that newspaper has been lining that drawer for over 60 years.  Now, it’ll stay in its place – a tiny piece of history preserved.

I lightly sanded the edges with 220 grit sandpaper. Even with bonding agent, milk paint can still be distressed to create a slight aged look on a piece of furniture.

I used furniture wax to finish it, especially since milk paint needs a top coat finish because it’s a porous paint.

I still regret selling this piece. I can only hope someone else is enjoying it and giving it a second life in their home!