Perfect Example of Eww to Ahh

This buffet/bench is a perfect example of Eww to Ahh! 

This was sitting by the dumpster in the apartment complex the next block over.  I drive through there once in while, especially at the end of the month, when people are moving out and putting furniture pieces by the dumpsters.  I saw this one in the middle of the night  and could only see it by the lights of my van.  I looked at it, got out and walked around it, tried to determine exactly what it was and  if all that white stuff was paint or dust or what.  Opened the drawers and saw that they still had some garbage shoved in them....not garbage garbage, just the kind of stuff you leave in a dresser when you don't want to move it.  One of the drawers didn't appear to work properly.  The doors had no handles so had to be opened using the tips of your nails.  It looked absolutely filthy with that white hazy stuff all over it.  It was so heavy I could barely lift one end.  I decided it wasn't worth my time.

Look how tired she looks, I was working her hard!  She'd like you think that, but she was actually cracking the whip on me after I worked all day and came home to do projects with her.

I told my mom about it and she wanted to check it out.  So we went back, we pulled the broken drawer out to discover it just had more garbage shoved behind it so it wouldn't close, not broken.  We took a wet napkin and the haze wiped right off.....probably painters dust.  By wiping it, you could see the wood grain color and the basket weave on the doors.  Yes, it was very heavy but that usually means it is a quality piece of furniture.  Okay, she sold me on it!  We had one heck of a time loading it into the van but we got it home and down the stairs.

This thing was a hot mess!  Filthy!

I'd love to say that we did a total workover on the thing, but all we really did was clean it out, clean it like crazy, Pledge it like crazy to get in all the little cracks, put handles on the two doors and touch up the two dings in the veneer with some stain.  It was missing its original legs but I already have a buffet in the room so decided to let it stay low as bench.  I can always add some legs later.

This bad boy looks awesome!  It had a furniture stamp on one of the drawers that shows it to be a Caldwell Furniture piece.  I did some research  and the stuff on their site seems to be some nice furniture.  This one is likely from the 70s or 80s.    This had the dovetail joints, nice smooth movement on the drawers, only a couple of small dings in the venner and absolutely no price tag......what else could you want?  I'll just have to keep dusting it because now that I see the photos, I still see some dust in the cracks.