I bought a birdseye maple dresser for $20 at a yard sale a while back. I’ve always been a fan of birdseye maple. This dresser had been hand built by his grandfather about 80 years ago.

Most of the dresser was in good shape except for some green ink stains on the top of the dresser. I stripped the whole piece and then went to work on the stains. I sanded it down and used a laundry bleach pen, which altogether got most of the stain out. But it would have still been visible if I just put polyurethane on the top.

Instead, I chose to do a dark stain on the top and keep the rest its natural color. I think it turned out nicely.

One of my problems was the knobs. They were funky brass and I was missing one of the top knobs. There was no way I was going to find a matching one. Plus the lower knobs were just too out of date to salvage for this piece (I’ll save them for something else). So I tried different wooden knobs but could never get the colors to make sure correct with the top.

In the end, I was able to get a good price on some wooden knobs that covered the two holes that had been used with the previous knobs. I spray painted them with a matte finish espresso color. This was a good solution.

One of the other things I did was use wipe-on polyurethane. I’ve been using this product for years to get a nice smooth finish on my pieces. I normally will also wet sand between coats to get it extra smooth.