Friday, July 12, 2013

Whelp...

I worked on my furniture last weekend and I can finally say that I no longer hurt. But I'm still not finished stripping off all the old varnish. I completely missed one section on one of the dressers (it was getting late) and I didn't finish the mirror.  I actually had to have my husband help me finish what did get done because I ran out of time.

Here's what happened. Friday last week, I decided it was nice enough weather to start working on getting the varnish off my dressers. Now, the original plan was to do one dresser then, later, the second one. If I had been smart, I would have stuck with that plan. I got the first dresser (the tall one) painted with the gel stripping medium and thought to myself, "oh, I'm not going to be able to reuse these brushes! I have to do them both at the same time!" WRONG! I should have just remembered that I can rinse out the brushes and continue at a later date.So I started on the second dresser, again stupidly thinking that it wouldn't take too long. WRONG AGAIN!  I started at 7pm and by 10:30, I still had more drawers to clean the stripping medium off of (which, buy the way looked like poop) and I was exhausted and hot. So I left it to be finished in the morning (and my husband sis the drawers but the mirror was left unfinished. oops.)

I either need to do a lot of sanding or more stipping to get the rest of the varnish off. I am going to do a test piece this next week when I venture out to the garage again to work more on my furniture to finish what I've started.  And for your viewing pleasure, my project, about halfway through. (I took it with my cell phone so it kinda looks bad)


Thursday, July 4, 2013

Progress?

No, actually I haven't done anything. It's too hot. But tomorrow I have the morning off so I am going to get one of the dressers stripped. I got the new hardware. More to follow.

Sorry this is so short. It's late and I'm tired.

Sunday, June 23, 2013

FIRST!

And we're live!  I've been meaning to do this post for about a week or so, but I've been pretty busy with working two jobs (full-time and part-time).  So here goes the first post of the newly revamped blog of awesome.

About a month ago, I aquired some furniture from a friend who was moving. It needed some refinishing, so I decided to make it my summer project. Being me, it is not taking a week like I had originally planned, but rather, it's totally going to take all summer. I've actually made some progress, and I'll post some pictures soon. I took some pictures, but my camera sucks so much that a majority of them are unusable. Guess who's camera can't autofocus any more?!  It's gorgeous furniture: two dressers and a bed frame. I've decided to just redo the dressers.

They're 40-year-old dressers from my friend's parents. I love them. I am planning on staining them blue with an ombre scheme, to make them cool. I'm using photoshop and test wood to make sure that's a good idea.  The hard thing that I've run into though is the hardware. Four of the dresser pulls are broken (missing handles) and I needed to repair or replace them. That is what has been taking me a month. I first tried one type of hardware, but that failed catastrophically, and I've had to change directions, again. Finally, I've found some new hardware at Home Depot that will work (because apparently nobody makes cabinet pulls that are center-to-center 4 1/2" any more for less that $14 a piece) that is affordable and will hide the original holes. So I'm redoing one dresser and keeping the other dresser the same hardware. It is the best and most affordable solution.  I've even found something that looks great. I ordered them today and should have them in a week.

So next step is stripping the old varnish. That's this week's project. I have the evenings off, so I'm going to start on one dresser, get it prepped for staining and then get the second ready.  Have to get it done within the month though 'cause I have to move at the end of September due to a crazy Landlord. Not sure the new place will have a garage for projects...

Thursday, May 30, 2013

Construction

Things are a little under construction right now. I'm working on changing the format and updating this into something I'll actually use and something people can enjoy more.

More is to follow as I go live in a few days/weeks and I get everything set to be fantastically awesome.