Better late than never

So I'm a smidge late posting this one. I finished it the Friday before last but have been soooo busy I just didn't have the time or energy to write a new post. Anywho, the last dresser I posted about and this one I'm about to show you I bought together. They were both older dressers and showed it. This one was interesting to say the least. Here's the before.

It  doesn't look terrible but the white paint was matte and uneven and scratched up, yadda yadda. It needed to be stripped, no doubt. I started with the sander but realized that even with electricity it just was going to be too much work so I caved and bought chemicals. The upside to that is that I used Citristrip which is greener than the typical strippers so I didn't feel too bad about it.

By my count this dresser has been painted at least 7 times. And if you look at the picture below you can see that on the very bottom of all the paint there were graphics on the dresser. I made one out as a rocking horse and another was children, which I couldn't tell until I was actually scraping the paint off. I always think it's neat when you get a little bit of the history of a piece.

Can you see the rocking horse?

I actually had to apply stripper more than once in a few places. The paint was stubborn in some places.

 After stripping off as much of the paint as I could I went back to sanding and FINALLY painting! I cleaned the original glass knobs and she was finally ready for her closeup! Yay!

I've got several pieces I'll be working on over the next few weeks. I think this week's reveal is going to be an old bench I've had for at least 10 years and a night stand I picked up for free on Craigslist. You can see the other pieces I've worked on on my Facebook page. Head on over there and "Like" my page! See you again this Friday!

Half way there

I spent 5 hours today on one of the dressers I'll hopefully be finishing by Wednesday. It's a tall one with five drawers. I decided to go masculine with this one. I spent and eternity sanding but I think there is a mojo to it because it seemed to go a little faster towards the end. Anyway, I was able to stain it, although I was doing it by twilight. I moved it to the driveway because there was too much dust in the garage so I took it outside and wiped it down and stained it there. Once I'd wiped off the excess stain I moved it back inside the garage to a less dusty area to rest. From what I could tell in the dim, yellow light of the garage it looks great! I may need to do a second coat to the very top of the dresser and I still need to paint the hardware or possibly replace. I haven't decided since only one of the pieces is broken. I may just make the top two knobs different than the rest. I think I have some bronze paint left so that they'll all match.

The shorter dresser is finally stripped. I had to do some touching up today. I'll start sanding it tomorrow and HOPEFULLY get started painting it. Wednesday I'll finish it up if I haven't and apply a few coats of polycrylic to the tall dresser. Last but not least, I need to find some paper to put in the bottom of the drawers to cover up old stains and whatnot and then they'll be ready to sell!

I'm really looking forward to showing these off. My first dresser was WAY girly so I want to show that I can do a more grown up feminine dresser and even do well at a man's dresser. I'm excited for the reveal! It should be no later than Thursday! See you then!

Waiting

I have finally moved on to my second piece of furniture. It's another dresser, smaller, and I've decided to paint it white and yellow! I'm really excited about the yellow. This dresser has proven, already, to be a difficult one because after sanding just the top for nearly an hour (with an electric sander, mind you!) I gave up and went to buy chemicals. This thing has at least 7 different layers of paint on it, all different colors and when I went to remove the hardware whomever made it basically dug out the wood because the screws on the hardware weren't long enough so I'm going to have to fill those in with wood filler (I might need to get a bigger container!) and then find hardware with screws long enough to go through. The original hardware is nice and I was going to keep it but I just don't think I'd feel right selling it with giant holes where the knobs are. It looks sloppy. Or maybe if worse comes to worse I'll just cover it with contact paper which I'll have to get for the drawer bottoms anyway because they're stained and whatnot. Now I just need to find some decent looking paper.

So I just got back in from slapping two coats of Citristrip on it and the drawers and I'm waiting for it to do it's thing. I read a review on it from another blog. She was testing it vs the more caustic version and Citristrip won. Her project actually had several coats of paint on it, too, so I'm hoping mine turns out as well. I am actually painting it white again so if it doesn't all come off it's not a problem but because there were SO many layers of paint it was all sloppy looking and I couldn't just slap another coat on and expect it to be nice and smooth. That sander has met it's match!

I have a third dresser I'll be working on that's taller. I plan on doing something more masculine with that since my first dresser was super girly and the second one will be pretty feminine but more grown up. Unless I change my mind I plan on staining the body and some of the drawers ebony and every other drawer a sun bleached light stain. I got inspiration from a table I saw while browsing for ideas. I'm not sure what color I'm going to do the hardware. I haven't inspected it closely yet so I don't even know if I'll be able to use the original. It'll definitely be dark but not black. Maybe a charcoal grey or something along those lines, rubbed bronze, pewter...I'll figure it out.