Refurbished Dresser into Bench Seat

A couple of months ago I was cruising through pinterest and saw a lady convert an old beat up chest of drawers into a beautiful bench seat. I immediately thought to my self that I could do that, for it just so happened that I had a broken dresser just sitting in my basement. 

I asked my friends, the Marshalls, if they could help me with this project. Shawn Marshall is a manager at Habitat for Humanity ( A little advertising for my friend...did you know that you can go to their store and get household items for super cheap, like tile, lights, and paint?) Anyways, he's got a lot of tools that we don't have, so if you think you can't do any type of carpentry work because you don't have the tools, well by golly  get yourself a friend with tools!

I wish that I had taken a before picture but this is pretty much what the dresser looked like except that it had three rows of drawers.

Step 1: Pull out the drawers and set them to the side.Then,

 carefully pry off the top. (Be Careful with everything you pry off!)

 Save any trim or wood pieces that you take off, you may use them later.

Step 2: Cut the top section of drawers out.

Step 3: Measure out the base of your trunk section. Cut a thin wood panel to place in there for the shoes to sit on. Nail it down. (We did have to loosen the frame in order to get the base in and then we pushed the frame back together.)  

Step 4: Any extra trim pieces that are perhaps 1x1 inch would be good to use as reinforcement pieces. Our dresser was pretty flimsy so we reinforced the edges and middle so that it wouldn't break when people sat on it. So reinforce your trunk where you feel is weak.

Step 5: Pick out the best 2 drawers to be your bottom drawers where your hats and gloves will go. Then take the  next best drawers to be the face plates for your trunk. Remove the face plates from the drawer. Secure them into place on your trunk. They will not open they are merely decorative and cover the holes where there use to be drawers but is now a trunk. Then replace your bottom drawers, they should slide right back into their original positions.  

Step 6: The top now becomes the bench seat. Measure it to fit, you may need to cut a few inches off the side and then reattach any trim. As you can see below, we also reinforced the lid with some 1x3 inch trim inside it. (After you have measured your lid, take off another 1/4 inch so that when you put a cushion and fabric on the lid, it will still close.) Attach lid with a piano hinge. (Hint: keep the screws loose and do only the end screws first just to make sure your lid opens easily. Once you have checked, you can screw the rest in and secure them all.)

Then you can see if your stuff fits into it. 

 Paint it. I started with a base coat of green.

 I attempted to do the homemade crackle paint effect from off of pinterest using glue but it didn't work so I just used a turquoise blue for the edges and dry brushed it on.

 As you can see from the top picture, I had two cushions but I needed one more. I went to JoAnne Fabric, and used a 40% off coupon and bought the third cushion...highway robbery if you ask me, even with the coupon!) I had this cute leftover fabric and staple gunned it on the lid over the cushion. The 1/4 inch extra space on the lid was the perfect amount for my lid to still close easily.

 Then you can reattach your old handles or get new ones.

 I had all the materials for this project except the piano hinge: $12.95 (Again...highway robbery)

and the third cushion: $5.40 so I got an amazing bench shoe chest for less than $20.00 and I could probably sell it for $150.00 but I am not going to. My kids love it, I love it, and it is perfect for my little mud room. 

I hope this little tutorial was informative and helpful...if not...well I tried to explain it. 

Tell me what you think of it!