‘I renovated my nana’s dresser, and found Tiktok is a web of lies’
Kylie Klein Nixon was keen to restore a special piece of her family’s history so turned to the internet for advice. She found to her it wasn’t as easy as the internet boffins made it out to be.
Of all the vintage furniture in my grandmother’s house, I loved her chest of drawers the most. A hunk of dark brown wood, with a chic curved front and little carved shoes on its feet, the dresser had three tall mirrors that folded out like a mediaeval triptych, so you could see yourself from all angles.
It was where Nana kept her Oil of Ulay, her pearls, her little tubes of scarlet lipstick, and bottles of 4711 scent. It was also where she kept her ‘‘unmentionables’’, a rose-scented little drawer full of creamy champagne satin, so much more mysterious and grown-up than my boring old kids’ undies.
To pre-teen me, that dresser was a symbol of feminine style and grace.
Made some time in the 1940s, the dresser might have been among the first pieces of furniture my grandparents bought when they moved here from Fiji (Nana was Tongan, but lived in Fiji most of her childhood). It might even have been part of Nana’s trousseau.
By the time it came to me, it had survived five children – a minor miracle according to mymum– and was still in pretty good nick, just a few dings and chips in the varnish. The mirrors were intact, and it was only missing the corner of one original Bakelite drawer handle.
I was excited to get to work. This little job would be no trouble at all, I thought – as only someone who’s never restored a piece of furniture before, but has watched hours of Tiktok reno clips and every episode of The Repair Shop, can.
From the get go, it was harder than I’d expected. It weighed an absolute tonne, and getting it out of the house was a three-person job. Figuring out how to take off the mirrors without wrecking them was fraught, but between my brother, cousin and myself, we got it to my cousin’s shed where I planned to do the work.
She’d done this sort of project herself a couple of times, so knew what I was up against.
First of all, Tiktok is a dirty liar. Not one second of those artful, deftly edited clips set to Harry Styles’ As It Was prepared me for how grimy, sometimes backbreaking, often painful it is to strip 80-year-old varnish off hardwood.
After cleaning every nook and cranny, of which there were many, and vacuuming up all the dead spiders (ditto), I painted the entire body with thick, viscous stripper.
When you watch those clips online, the people doing the work always look immaculate, like scraping up varnish is about as difficult as scraping icing off a cake. It is a bit like scraping icing off, I suppose, if the icing was made of concrete and acid.
The problem was that the stripper dissolved the varnish unevenly, so the scraper would catch on unmelted bits and flick up, sending melted varnish and fire juice everywhere. At the end of the first day it was in my hair, down the neck of my T-shirt, and lurking in every fold of my hoodie.
Now, what you may not know about varnish stripper is that it is also skin, nasal cavity and eyeball stripper. My cousin had said it would sting if I got it on me, but failed to stress that even the tiniest dot would feel like someone sticking me with hot needles. Excruciating.
I had gloves, protective glasses and long sleeves, but it still found its way to the smallest strip of
My unmentionables are more boring and functional than hers ever were, but having her dresser with me is like having a piece of her with me.
exposed flesh. By the time I got to sanding, I was resigned to the filth.
I’d never used a belt sander before – it was a steep learning curve. Tiktok makes it look like you just glide the thing over the grain gently, leaving perfectly smooth and burnished grain behind. Aswe’ve already established, Tiktok is a lying liar that lies.
After hours of sweat and toil, I finally got rid of the varnish and some of the more shallow dings. I wiped it down and... there was the wood. It was gorgeous.
I, however, looked like I’d spent the day rolling around on the forest floor.
With all the varnish gone, I had to make a difficult decision: the Bakelite handles were cool, but not in as good a repair as I’d first thought. Finding handles to match was next to impossible. This is why so many restorers just putty over the original handle holes, paint the drawers and put new holes in for modern knobs.
I discussed it with my aunty. This was a piece of our shared history, so I didn’t want to just change it completely without consulting the kāinga (extended family, in Tongan), and we decided it would be OK to make the same changes.
I picked Resene Blue Night for the drawer fronts – Nana loved navy blue. It was regal and elegant – and paired it with gold knobs.
I used Danish oil on the body of the dresser, to make the most of that beautiful grain (and because I love the smell – another thing the internet can’t give you), and I was finally done.
Unfortunately, the mirrors weighed so much I couldn’t get them back on easily. They’rewrapped up in my garage at the moment, but I will get them repaired and put back on eventually.
Then there was nothing else to do, except bring the dresser home, put rose-scented liners in the drawers and fill it with my own unmentionables. The result? I reckon it’s smashing.
I couldn’t be happier actually, and luckily the kāinga feels the same. It’s still Nana’s dresser, even though it looks very different. My unmentionables are more boring and functional than hers ever were, but having her dresser with me is like having a piece of her with me, and I’m proud I could give it a second life.