Leather Drawer Pulls DIY

Today I’m bringing you such an easy DIY. I recently painted a dresser for a friend and spent about $3 to give it a whole new look by using a thrifted leather belt to make drawer pulls. This is not new information, there are a million blog posts and pinterest pins on making leather drawer pulls. For some reason though, I always thought it was harder than it actually ended up being and spoiler alert: they turned out so awesome! So, since I am the queen of short cuts, let me show you how I made these awesome “it’s good enough” drawer pulls in less than 20 minutes.

First of all, I used my chalk paint recipe
to paint the dresser SW Intellectual Gray. At least that’s the closest
color I could find to it. I’m a notorious
custom-paint-color-maker…It’s great except when I need to match the
color I made.. Also, like how I took time to put on work clothes and shoes?…My sweet man gets on to me for my “project footwear”.

I thrifted 2 not-real-leather belts. They had similar stitch patterns and the brown color of the finish was pretty similar.

I used regular scissors to cut off the belt buckles then measured the width of the hardware holes and cut the belt pieces about an inch and a half longer than that measurement. The holes were 3 1/4″ apart and I made the belt sections 4 3/4″. I only measured afterward, I just eyeballed it at the time… It’s not that serious. I did want there to be enough room so that the drawers could be opened easily.

I used the first cut piece as a  guide for cutting the rest. When I got down to the part of the belt with the holes, I just kept cutting. I thought it’s cool to be able to see the belt holes and tell that’s what this was.

This is also when I decided to flip the belts to the black side. The room that’s being redone is also getting the left over wallpaper from the nursery makeover I did for another friend. The black in the wallpaper and the black in the (p)leather will work so well together. Duh, Jessica.

If you looked closely at the picture above, you can see that when I flipped them over, one piece had the size and style markings pressed into the belt. That strap just went on a bottom drawer. Again, “it’s good enough”…. charming. ; )

I already had these pretty brass screws left over from old drawer pulls. With a drill bit matching the size of the screw, I drilled holes in all of the straps.

I used a piece with belt holes as the guide.

When all the holes were drilled, I began to install them. I used a hammer to get the screws through the hole I drilled and then pushed the screw into the hole on the drawer front.

The second side was just a tiny bit trickier because I had to bend the belt then hammer the screw through the strap and the hardware hole.

I took one of the screws into our tiny neighborhood hardware store where they found the right sized nut to hold everything together from the back.

I screwed the nuts onto the back of each screw and used a screwdriver on the front side to make everything tight. And then put the drawers back into the dresser.

I am so in love with how it turned out. The dresser looks so modern and masculine now. Such an easy transformation.

Here it is in its home.

I love the little shelf on top. It reminds me of my DIY one here.

I also made this felt word banner and included some of the left over wallpaper. I took pictures of the process so if it ever turns into a post. I’ll let you know.

Anna, I hope the dresser serves your boys well for years to come.

Please let me know if you have any questions on the process. I’m happy to answer whatever I might have left out.

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 Thanks for reading, friends!