Well, the dresser is coming along quite well. We’ve been very happy with its progress. Sanded down, we managed to get all the gunk off it – at least 40 years of polish, dirt, oil, adhesive (from both childhood stickers and contact paper), gouges from where the miscellaneous 4-year-old choose to claim a drawer for his own, and even cat hair that got itself stuck in the mess. Once we got all of it off, underneath we found that it was really a very attractive oak veneer over a sturdy plywood frame. We’re just amazed at how well it’s cleaning up.

Now the dresser’s been stained in a dark oak color and yesterday we put the first coat of polyurethane on. Today we go back to the workshop, sand it again, and apply a second layer. And then tomorrow we go do it again. Once that final layer dries, we’re done and ready to bring our dresser to its new home in our guest room. Photos coming soon.

The hardware is going to be a bit tricky. Three of the four drawers have lower lip pulls rather than handle hardware; you open those drawers by reaching underneath them and pulling them open via a groove in the wood. The top drawer, though, is outfitted with two metal handles (aluminum? steel? your guess is as good as ours – originally it was a brass finish), and their screw placements are nonstandard – 2 inches, apparently common decades ago but highly difficult to replace now. So instead of hunting around for replacement hardware, we’re instead going to try to refinish the original handles; if that doesn’t work, we’ll try to paint them.

I searched around on the Web and tripped over some references to Rub n Buff, a metallic finish used in arts and crafts. The website I read said that we could find it over at Michaels, and that they made it in dozens of different styles – tarnished brass, several different gold-color finishes, silver and pewter, etc. Seemed the ticket, so off to Michael’s we went yesterday to pick up some. If we could find it, we’d give it a shot with the handles sometime this weekend.

Now I’m going to take you on a tangent completely unrelated to the dresser. So bear with me.

Michael’s is a store heavily loaded down with crap even on a good day. With holidays coming up – particularly Halloween – the usual high junk level spikes into OH-MY-GOD-ARE-YOU-KIDDING-ME territory, and you’re left just to marvel in amazement at the products that not only people dream up, but actually manage to get through budgeting, production and finally market distribution.

And so, I humbly present for your consideration: Tricky Kitty.

It’s a plastic cat. That poops jelly beans.

Seriously: there’s a chute. Appropriately located. And jelly beans come out. Brown jelly beans.

The tagline on the package reads, “His Trick Is To Leave A Treat!”

Now here’s the scary part: go do a Google search for “poops jelly beans” and see what comes up. Turns out there’s a whole genre of cheap toys made based on the simple concept of an animal of some sort that poops jelly beans. Birds. Pigs. Easter bunnies. I’m sure Santa is out there somewhere.

This is what Google has brought to us. Cheap metal finishing products, and jelly beans pooped at command. Thank you, oh Great God Google!