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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Linking up here:

Coastal Charm’s Nifty Thrifty Tuesday	Elizabeth & Co.
	No Minimalist Here’s Open House Thursday
Friday Remodelaholic	2805
My Simple Home Life’s Simple Creations Friday	Miss Mustard Seed’s Furniture Feature Friday
Funky Junk’s Saturday Night Special	The DIY Show Off
Primitive & Proper	Thrifty Décor Chick
	My Uncommon Slice of Suburbia
Perfectly Imperfect	{Primp}
Simply Klassic Sundays	My Repurposed Life
From My Front Porch to Yours	It’s So Very Cheri
Common Ground	{aka} design

Gradient Dressers, revisited

AtticMag  has featured a great collection of Gradient Dressers, included the one I created!

Go see them all here!

A little more pizzazz

Once upon a time, there was a cabinet at the top of the stairs.

This cabinet served the Very Important Purpose of holding yarn and knitting needles (for the winter months when the furnishing-refinishing business is slow). It was a good cabinet, but it wasn’t well-liked. The fact that it was brown against a brown wall probably had something to do with it.

So one day in the dead of winter, it got painted!

…and there was much rejoicing!

Although it looked much better, and it still continued to fulfill its Very Important Purpose most admirably, the fickle owner (yes, that’s me) was not completely satisfied. I envisioned something with a little more style…a little more panache…a little more pizzazz…to fulfill the Very Important Purpose. However, besides being fickle, I also happen to be incredibly cheap <ahem>, I mean frugal. So I settled back to wait until the furniture fates would conspire to give me what I wanted.

When this little chest appeared in the classified ads, and it happened to coincide with a trip to the airport, I knew my day had arrived! The seller told me this chest used to belong to her grandmother. She sold it to me for $48!

I painted this little chest in my favorite off-white…

…distressed it lightly, and glazed it to “age” the color. There was no changing the hardware on this piece...the knobs are a carved part of the drawer fronts! There were no visible bolts or screws.

Being not only fickle and frugal, but also impatient, I hauled it up to the top of the stairs all by myself to see how it would look!

I think…I like it!

It now serves the Very Important Purpose of holding yarn and knitting needles…and looking pretty.

The former cabinet is serving some other Very Important Purpose for some Other Person now. I sold it for $160, and since I use paint and glaze I had on hand, I maintain that I made $112 on this deal!

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Linking up here.

Steampunk

Do you know what “steampunk” means? I certainly didn’t! I had to check out wikipedia’s definition and, of course, ask my husband once I heard that word being tossed around. As it relates to furniture, I have decided it means anything that is a little bit industrial, a little bit funky, and a lot of fun!

I started out with this chest of drawers that has been sitting in my garage for months. I have mentioned often that furniture “speaks” to me, but this one was strangely silent for a long time…

…Apparently, that’s because I wasn’t speaking it’s language!

Then one fateful day, I spotted this cute dresser at Twice Lovely:

…and I knew…

My chest of drawers, however, wanted to be black and distressed. It was an old piece to begin with, so I needed to work with that.

I purchased vintage valve handles from etsy. They came with the original dirt still attached! My love for ‘vintage’ ends there, so I ran them through the dishwasher.

I used 1/4” x 1 1/2” machine screws to attach the hardware. There isn’t much of a ‘neck’ on these valve handles to hold them away from the drawers, so they were a bit awkward to use. So next I purchased 1/4” nylon spacers to place between the valve handle and the drawer, and that makes them much more comfortable.

They handles are secured by 1/4” nuts on the inside of the drawer.

That’s all there is to it! But I love the fun, funky look of the piece. I think this would be fabulous in a boy’s room!

What about you? Have you jumped on the “steampunk” bandwagon yet?

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Linking up here.

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This project was featured at Simple Home Creations, House of Hepworths, and Beyond the Picket Fence .

Retro Red

From a vintage baby cradle to a retro buffet…I am a woman of contrasts! I fell in love with this piece at Deseret Industries:

It really is a lovely piece. The wood was in remarkable good condition…the finish…not so much. Whatever had been on there for a protective coat flaked off like mad…it looked like I was sanding in a snowstorm!

I know aqua is all the rage, and I gave serious consideration to that color—but I decided to go back to my first love: red!

I had a terrible time getting the color to photograph well. It was almost a brick red before I glazed it with black…then it seemed to turn a dark cranberry.

The next picture is too bright…but I wanted to show the cute key! I love the fact that this buffet has a key. I painted the rest of the hardware with ORB spray paint, but I left the key it’s original brass.

Do you have a color you love, despite all the trends? What is it?

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This project has been featured at Sisters of the Wild West.

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Linking up here.

Bird on Blue

This post has been featured at

I'm So Vintage

&

Thanks, ladies!

I am not a squealer. Really. But I almost squealed with delight when I cam across this dresser at Deseret Industries (that's Utah's "Goodwill") a month or so ago.

Isn't it cute? Despite the nasty orange color, I mean...and yes, it was really that color in real life.

The top drawer had a problem. There had obviously been water damage, and one of the layers of the drawer bottom was peeling up.


...but...it was up on legs! And there was another treasure in the top drawer:

Casters. I love 'em.

So I brought it home with me. What I hadn't noticed in the store was this little problem:


Yep. I whole corner was missing. How did I not notice that?? I blame the casters.

So it sat, and sat, and sat in my garage....until the glorious day that Twice Lovely introduced me to Kwik Wood. It's an epoxy mixture that you need together to form a shapeable putty to fix those missing chunks and pieces.

See?

It wasn't perfect...but it was heckuvalot better than what a had before.

Then I used my handy-dandy Harbor Freight Multi-Tool (it was my Mother's Day present from me...to me) to scrape away and remove all the veneer from the drawer bottom.

It worked like a charm! You may wonder why I didn't just replace the drawer bottom. I had intended to, but it was GLUED in place! There was no way to get it out without some serious damage potential, so I chose to just remove the peeling layer. The drawer bottom is sturdy enough without it.

Finally...on to painting! The dresser was gray...briefly. But I wasn't feeling the love.

Bleaahh.

What do I love instead? Blue!

...and of course it needed a little something more on the decorative front panel. I painted a bird in antique white, which matches the paint job on the knobs. Everything is glazed with Jacobean stain to bring out the details. I only did a very little distressing...I didn't want the orange showing through!

Don't you love the legs?
What?? No casters?!
That's right. I'm keeping 'em!