I'm with you on fake colonial. You might be able to remove the pulls and the escutcheon plates behind them before refinishing and then replace only the pulls, adding some small washers to the bolts.

Milk paint in light turquoise with crystal drawer pulls....fill in the pegs with wood putty and sand to flat. This is a gorgeous piece...I'd love to have it....

i'm 100% with doghousemom. it's like she read my mind. putting a blank piece of wood on the front after removing the faux colonial wood would be easy. measure, go to lowes/home depot and ask the nice man in the lumber department to cut 2 pieces that size. take them home and wood glue them in place. done and done. not hard or time consuming and not expensive either. good luck! underneath it all there are good bones.

And it's your table. So you should do with it whatever pleases you.

What wood? It looks like hard rock maple. If so, be sure to do proper prepping before you paint and use a base coat so the paint will stick good. Maple has such fine grain paint doesn't like it so much. Personally, I am like you, don't care for light woods, I would refinish it in Minwax Dark Walnut mixed with a touch of Red Mahagony (my personal favorite stain recipe LOL). The drawers could be jazzed up a bit with some wood carvings from Van Dykes or Rocklers to give it a bit of pizzazz.

http://seattle.craigslist.org/sno/ard/3794983942.html

Candace, I thought you would be amused by someone else's idea of refurbishing a very similar cabinet.

Oh wow. Let me add that to the list of what not to do!!

I actually have a similar cabinet and like it. Maybe some new pulls?

Monolithic! hehehehehe! I must publish the picture ... :-D

I like this too.