Vanity & Dresser Refinish

Thank you for all the kind comments about my daughter’s bedroom makeover, both here and on Facebook!  It was so fun to get to work on this with her.  She is always my sounding board for the various crazy ideas I have, but this time she was truly invested in the project!

One of our first steps in her room remodel was finding some new furniture for her to use.  The $100 junky particle board set I bought four years ago (at her request, make no mistake about that!) was promptly sold—for the same price I paid for it!  There’s just no accounting for tastes, is there??

We scoured Craigslist for a vanity/dresser set, and finally came home with these for $150:

Only $50 more, and this time it was actually decent furniture!

Well, you can see the finish on the top was in REALLY rough shape.  But structurally everything was sound, and the veneer was in very good condition…a couple of chips here and there, but nothing major.

The “to-paint-or-not-to-paint” question was discussed at length, but Naomi eventually decided on “not.”

Since she wanted a darker stain, I decided to use my favorite miracle product, General Finishes Gel Stain (no, unfortunately they don’t pay me to say that) in Antique Walnut.  

You can see how I used it in my card catalog refinish here and a bedroom set here.

The great thing about this gel stain is that you DON’T have to completely remove the old finish.  Rough it up, yes—but if you’re going darker, you don’t have to go down to bare wood.  You can see how I lightly sanded the bottom half of the side of the dresser below.

I did have to do some more serious sanding on the top of the vanity.  Where the poly finish had worn away over time the colors were very splotchy—so I had to do a little more work to get everything back to the same tone.

But oh, look at what a difference ONE coat of gel stain made!

I ended up using two coats on everything, followed by two coats of General Finishes Polyurethane.

And oh, I think it was worth it!

The handles are original, I just cleaned them up a bit a lot!

And I recovered the vanity bench in a fun yellow and white chevron.

Have you ever used gel stain before?  What did you think of it?

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The Inspiration Exchange	Elizabeth & Co.
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Knick of Time	Domestically Speaking
Perfectly Imperfect	No Minimalist Here
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Ombre Stained Dressers

I have been busy building a massively heavy table and two benches over the last couple of days, and I have the sore muscles to prove it!  It is beginning to all come together…today I just need to go buy some wood for the bench tops, and then I’ll be ready to sand, sand, sand…and start the finishing process.

So this morning I’m pulling up a couple of pieces that I sold at the October Market.  My crummy cell phone photos are the best I could do—the weather never was nice enough in the days before the Market to get decent pictures!

I found these two matching chests at Goodwill.  I do have a little weakness for mid-century furniture…I love the clean lines of it, although I don’t imagine its something I will ever use in my own home.  But that’s why I refinish furniture, so I have an excuse to PLAY with pieces I would never keep for myself!

My idea for what to do with these dressers evolved over time.  Originally I was going to do an ombre paint treatment in shades of gray, but after I sanded off the old finish, I decided to try stain.

Then my first try of staining was a bust.  Although I used three different colors of stain, they all came out looking the same!

Some flaws in the finish led to me trying again, and the next time I chose three REALY different colors of stain!

The bottom is Ebony, the middle is English Chestnut, and the top is Natural (all Minwax brand).

I love how the pattern of the wood grain is consistent down the front of the drawers.  It makes it easy to know which drawers go together!

They make a nice pair, don’t you think?  I sold them to a lady who was going to use them in an attic bedroom space where the walls are short…a perfect fit!

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Linking up here:

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Common Ground	My Repurposed Life
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Three-Tone Dresser

My dear parents were visiting us all last week, so I’m a little behind on projects…but I wouldn’t trade my time with them for anything!  This is the first time they’ve been able to come see us since we moved last Christmas.  My mother is in very poor health and it is particularly difficult for her to travel so I don’t know how many opportunities like this we will have.  She kept fretting that she was “keeping me” from getting ready for my next show…but I reminded her of one of the greatest lessons she ever taught me…

People are always more important than things!

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So here’s a project that I actually finished several weeks ago; it has already gone on to a new home.  I did get to enjoy it in my dining room for a little while!

It was a garage sale find that was meant to be mine!  It was in remarkably good shape…it had the original casters (love those), all the pulls, no missing veneer, etc.  The only thing it was missing was the little metal drawer stops that keep the drawers from sliding all the way back…a few partially-exposed screws took care of that!

I thought the wood veneer on the drawers was too pretty to cover up.  the top drawer is something like curly maple…I think…while the bottom drawers are walnut.  I am no expert, so I could be totally off here!

Although I used the same antique walnut stain on all the exposed wood, I wipe it off very quickly on the top drawer to highlight the difference.

The body was painted in Sherwin Williams Creamy, and lightly distressed and glazed.  I love the contrast of the paint and the stain!

You can see another two-tone dresser I finished last year here.  I don’t think this one will be the last!

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The “Free” Waterfall Chest of Drawers

Have you ever surfed the “free” category on Craigslist?  Well don’t.  It’s addicting! 

The siren call of getting something for nothing can be hard to overcome.  I know, because I spent several weeks checking it obsessively for something wonderful.

The hard part is, if you’re not willing to get in the car and go someplace RIGHT NOW, you’re going to miss out on the wonderful stuff.

And mostly, the wonderful stuff…really isn’t.

As my mother said, “If it sounds too good to be true…it probably is!”

But here’s my story!

This is the end result of a pretty little waterfall dresser I picked up FOR FREE! 

When the ad popped up, I excitedly e-mailed the owner, only to find that it had already been spoken for.  <sigh>  Much to my delight, the freeloader before me prior interested party was a no-show, and I was next on the list!

This is what it looked like when I got it.

Not bad, right?  There were a few chips and dings, and the finish was old and faded, but all the drawers and hardware were there…I picked it up without looking a gift horse in the mouth!

When I got it home, the hidden problems became apparent.  A couple of the drawers were pretty much held together with spit and baling wire, and I think all the drawer guides, slides, and whatsits were missing.

But the exterior was really in such good condition that I couldn’t bring myself to paint it!  So instead, I sanded off the old finish coat and used General Finishes Gel Stain to bring the wood back to life.

Look at this detail!

The problem was that fixing the drawers to work properly was really beyond me.  I could cobble them back together so contents didn’t fall out the cracks, but I really didn’t have a clue how to construct new wood slides and guides.

So this was a piece I chose NOT to take with me to the barn sale.  It did go to a new home via Craigslist yesterday, but of course I had to be completely honest about the condition of the drawers.  I felt bad that I couldn’t really restore it to full usefulness and beauty.

But hey…it cured me of cruising the “free” category on Craigslist…at least for a little while!

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The Handbuilt Bedroom, pt. 3 ~ The Dresser!

Today is my son’s birthday—the one I am creating “The Handbuilt Bedroom” for (see part 1 here and part 2 here).  His birthday pie has been started, and all that’s left to do now is to clean the kitchen—but I thought I’d rather blog about his bedroom instead!

If you’ve been following along, you’ll know that I sold everything out of his bedroom in one fell swoop!  The dresser, the desk, the chair, the bed, AND all the bedding…gone.

The boy was living out of boxes and sleeping on an air mattress.

So despite the fact that I’ve only built simple pieces like tables and benches, it became necessary for me to jump into something more complicated—like a chest of drawers (or dresser, whatever you’d like to call it)!

We had already planned out furniture placement in his room, and the chest had to fit on this little short wall next to the window.

Naturally I turned to Ana White for plans, but didn’t find anything that exactly suited mine—and my son’s—requirements for style and size.  So I altered the Wide Cabin Dresser plans to make a narrow cabin dresser instead.  Almost like I knew what I was doing! 

This is the completed frame of the dresser…

And this is the first drawer!  I was so excited.  I installed the slides and it all worked perfectly.

Call it “beginner’s luck.”

And that’s because it took ages to get the next three drawers to work.  Ugh.  Turns out I hadn’t been careful enough in selecting straight boards for the drawer boxes.  A word to the wise—when purchasing your boards, lay several down on the floor next to each other and see how the straight those edges are.  It helps!  But I didn’t do that for this project.

With the help of a few several well-placed washers, I was able to get everything shimmied around until the drawers opened and closed without falling off the tracks.  It was loads of fun. There is a reason Ana tells you not to attempt drawers as a beginner project.  But hey, you have to start somewhere.

Here’s my cruddy cell-phone picture of the dresser after I put on the drawer fronts (which is a two-person job) and painted and stained it.  The color was a little too bright for me, so I glazed over everything with black stain.

I “reverse stenciled” the numbers on the drawer fronts—meaning I stained the front first, then applied vinyl words before I pained over it.  I chose to stain the top and the bottom shelf because they’ll get the most abuse, and I think stained pieces handle it better!

I bought two of these baskets from Amazon for the bottom.  Someday I may “age” them a little, but that’s not today.  And the idea is to make tags for them that say “five” and “six” to continue with the number theme.

This dresser is oh-so-far from perfect.  The top drawer has a tendency to stick, for one thing…but it is keeping my son’s clothes off the floor (mostly), and let’s be honest…isn’t that all we’re really asking a dresser to do??

This is not the first time I’ve painted a red, numbered chest of drawers, I remembered!  You can see the other one here.

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This project has been featured at The DIY Show Off, Elizabeth & Co., and My Repurposed Life.

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Two-tone Dresser

I know, I know…it’s  not a house project.  But this is probably the last furniture project I finished in 2012, and it hasn’t been shown off!

As you know, deciding we were moving to Seattle last October threw a real loop in our lives.  I still had half a garage (my half) full of projects that I planned to finish for a fall boutique.  Cooler heads prevailed, and I backed out of the boutique in order to concentrate on moving, and I sold most of my projects in whatever state they were in.

This little dresser was an exception.  You see…it was on casters.  I am such a sucker for casters. 

It was a little (OK, a lot) beat up, and it was missing one of it’s original carved wood handles, but I love those wheels!

I wasn’t really sure what I had in mind for this piece, but after I sanded it down, I decided the beautiful inlaid wood pattern on the drawers was too  pretty to cover up with paint.

My biggest problem then was that I was missing a handle, I couldn’t find anything that I remotely liked that could replace it and cover the original holes.  So…I didn’t.  I filled in the holes as best as I could and called it “good enough.”

Sitting here, right now, I’m thinking, “Why didn’t I make new pulls out of ribbon or something??”  They say hindsight’s 20/20, don’t you agree?

  

I didn’t have time for fancy staging for this one…just pulled it outside of my beautiful workshop (which finally got a concrete pad just a few weeks before we moved) and snapped some pictures on a cold November day.

I sold this piece the day before the movers arrived!  Honestly, I wouldn’t have cared if it had had to come with me, though!

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This project has been featured at My Repurposed Life.

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Linking up here:

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Zack’s Room: Oak to Espresso

I have a friend who’s been putting gentle pressure on me to refinish some furniture for her son’s room (I painted a desk for her daughter last year). 

I kept telling her, “Wait till spring!”

As soon as we had two consecutive days of 60-degree weather, she was calling me 

The tricky part was that she didn’t want painted furniture this time, she just wanted to darken the existing stain on some pieces she already had.  I will frankly admit that I was NOT excited about that plan.  The only way I knew to get a good, stained finish was to get down to bare wood as best as possible—and anything with creases and corners is a nightmare.

One lucky day, however, I came across this project from Monica Wants It where she used General Finishes Gel Stain to change a boring oak vanity to a beautiful espresso.

Can blogs be answer to prayers?  I think so!

And is it OK to be in love with a refinishing product?  I hope so!

I am SO impressed with the gel stain!  I did NOT have to strip or sand to bare wood.  After scuff-sanding all the surfaces…

And trust me, there were a LOT of surfaces…

A dresser with nine drawers and two cupboard doors…

…a TV stand-turned-nightstand (also has two cupboard doors)…

…and a bookcase headboard with two shelves…

Sorry, that’s all the “before” pictures I remembered to take!

I applied the gel stain (espresso color) using my husband’s old socks!  (That’s what Monica recommended for her project.)  It worked GREAT!  I may have to buy my husband some more socks so I can have the old ones!

You can’t freak out after the first coat goes on…it’s going to look at little splotchy.

OK, maybe it will look a LOT splotchy!

But it’s better after two coats (I waited 24 hours between coats)…

…and SO much better after three!

The funny thing about this gel stain—it smells sweet!  And it looks (and feels) like chocolate pudding.  I was almost tempted to take a taste! 

No, not really!

To finish things up, I used two coats of General Finishes Top Coat (using more socks), and I painted the hinges and the casters with ORB spray paint.

Then I pestered my friend until she let me come take pictures of everything in Zack’s room!

Zacky was happy to show me his “new room.”

I always like to see a satisfied customer!

Featured on Better After!

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