restored silky oak kitchen dresser

This is a rare silky oak kitchen dresser (they're usually pine or maple etc), date and place of manufacture unknown. My father restored this one, bought from a second hand store in Cairns for under $200 from memory. It was in a very sorry state, about ten coats of paint, no glass, original handles long gone and the hinges were all broken.

Luckily we were able to get hinges to match the originals, but my father didn't want to spend the extra money on getting original catches too so just put handles on that he had already. They look ok but one day I will probably put some catches back on.

I don't know if it had leadlight in the top doors, quite possible with these old dressers but we'll never know. Again, I might get someone to make some reproduction leadlighting for it one day.

It's finished with satin poly, handles the humidity better we've found.

It's a very nice piece, I like the curved top, and is still very functional in terms of storing plates etc. The missus and I have looked at many modern kitchen dressers to use for plate storage but are yet to find one where you can put the plates in flat, all are too narrow...so we bought an old kitchen dresser too!

Hi Womble,

Lovely piece of old(ish) furniture. I love that Silky Oak. Lucky you!

Looks really good now .:) My parents who married in South Oz had a ktchen dresser made when they married and that had leadlight in the doors which were sliding . Travelled all around SA and to the Northern Territory ( about 16 moves in all) and they still had it when they went into a retirement unit .