Lining Drawers of Antique Furniture

Antique furniture can be dirty, stained and smelly. Especially the drawers! Today I will show you how easy it is to cover the stains often found in the drawers of antique furniture by simply lining the drawers. It’s so easy!

so many projects

You know we have been working on reinventing an antique roll-top desk similar to the one in the image below. This sofa table was the first transformation from the roll-top desk.

This pair of side tables is the next project we are reinventing from the two sections that make up the base of the roll-top desk. One section has a cabinet door and one drawer.

The other section has four drawers.

dirty drawers!

The drawers were pretty yucky when we got the piece. I sanded the interior of the drawers as well as the exterior sections of the piece. After taking the shop vac to all of that sanding dust, I also thoroughly cleaned the cabinets inside and out.

The exterior of the drawers turned out perfectly! The sanding and the cleaning gave me these results:

stains….

But the interiors of the drawers still had stains. One had a big red blotch – probably a leaking pen or ink from an ink bottle. This 100 year old roll top desk was bound to have something spilled in the drawers!

Lining the drawers was the perfect solution. The surprise of the lovely patterned paper instead of the red ink blotch will put a smile on our client’s face! And yes, this pair of cabinets are already spoken for!

lining drawers

Watch this video to see how easy it is to line drawers with pretty paper! You’ll be lining drawers yourself in no time!

easy project!

Wasn’t that easy?? Think of the possibilities with using different colors and prints of paper!

Let me know if you found this video tutorial helpful in the comments. And be sure to stop back for the rest of the transformation of this roll-top desk. We still have the large oak desktop surface and two side pieces to reinvent!

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