My husband had an old dresser from the 70s.  It was bad.  Bad colour.  Bad handles.  Bad vibes.  I hated it- the entire 7 years it was in our bedroom in its original state.  You see, for as bad as it was, it did have 5 drawers, and when you live in a tiny trailer, you don’t take those sorts of things lightly.  There is no before shot because I like you and I don’t want to scare you.

Two summers ago, I finally painted it and it was a whole new piece of furniture.

This is the way it sat for a couple of years, then, much prettier, but handleless.  Kind of a pain as we keep all sorts of useful things in those drawers still and jamming your fingers in between the drawer and the dresser to pry it open is a less than ideal way of getting in there.

But I couldn’t find any handles I liked.  I mean, I could.  Lovely rustic, vintage ones that cost way too much.  But the cheaper versions?  No.  Thanks.

So finally I made handles.  Out of twine.

I took my lengths of twine and braided them to get the thickness of handle I wanted (that would still fit through the holes, and to be honest, this part wasn’t easy and took a lot of twisting, and cussing, but they eventually all worked).  I worked the ends of the braids into the holes for the hardware and tied a knot inside the drawer.  That’s it!

Then, because some of the little wooden pieces at the bottom were missing (3 out of 4 in fact), I decided to make little buttons to cover up those holes as well.  I just took a little piece of braid and twisted it around to make a little button and then hot glue gunned it on.

So there you have it.  Twine handles and buttons.

And then, because it finally had handles, some decoration!  My rusty banding star.  My coal oil lamp.  An old book.

And a petrified buffalo horn from my Grandpa.

It’s much better now, don’t you think?