Tips on Refinishing Furniture

As you know, I completely rearranged the furniture in our family room when we put all of the Christmas decorations away on New Year's day.  Once the furniture was rearranged I realized that the new setup needed an end table on one side of the sofa.  I decided to shop my house and brought up an end table I was using in the basement. 

It was the right dimensions and the right wood tone and even had a leather top.  It was my husband's grandmother's table and a few years back he inherited it.  

At the time I did a very quick refinish on the top.

One, because at the time I was exhausted from refinishing this dresser my husband also inherited...

and two, because I thought I could get away with a mini-makeover.  It was fine when the table was in the basement, where there is minimal natural light.  But once I brought the table into our family room where we get tons of daylight through all of the windows, I knew I would have to bite the bullet and actually refinish the top for real this time.

I started by covering the leather top with newspaper and taping it all around.  You can really see outside how uneven the finish was.  I had literally only sanded the corners originally where the most extensive damage was and did a band-aid stain job.  

This time I got out my electric sander and sanded the finish off to the bare wood.  I think it's easier to sand that to get involved in chemical furniture stripping products.  Maybe I'm using the wrong products, but I have never been successful using them.

One issue I did have was this corner.  No matter how much I sanded, I couldn't get rid of those lighter spots.  I ended up letting the stain sit on those spots a bit longer which evened out the finish.

Next I stained the top in red mahogany.  You can see how the corners took the stain a bit more than the middle.  With the second coat of stain I only went over the light spots and got everything to even out.  

Once the stain was dry I added a coat of wipe on polyurethane.  It wasn't shiny enough for me, so for the second and third coat I added clear shiny polyurethane.  Be careful with polyurethane... you don't want to put it on too thick or it will look all wavy.  Never shake polyurethane or it will create bubbles.   I used a foam brush since the amount of surface I was covering was minimal.  I was careful not to over brush the polyurethane, but at the same time brushed long enough to work out any bubbles and minimize any brush strokes.  I sanded in between each of the coats using 320 grit sandpaper.

Here's the top all prettied up now.

Not easy to get a good picture of the beautiful grain, but this gives you the idea.

I'm so glad I went to the effort of refinishing the top of this beautiful table.

She looks beautiful in our family room.

The only thing left to make this table perfect will be if I can find it brass feet.  When we took the table it only had two brass feet with wheels as the other two had been broken off over the years.  I have the two good ones that I removed so that the table could stand.  I have been searching the internet for a match but have been unsuccessful so far.   

-Judy

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Wicker Chair Makeover

There's inspiration behind every makeover.  In this case, there's a story.  

When our cat was sick a few months back she started to pee on the Pottery Barn area rug in our basement.  It started to become a  habit, and after a while, I was literally using my Bissell Spotbot several times a day.  The vet suggested that we add a litter box near the area rug, which has completely eliminated the problem.  Although it has fixed the problem, it created a decorating dilemma.  

Having a litter box in the corner of the room is not exactly the look I was going for.

Before the litter box, I used to have a small ottoman in the corner.  That wasn't going to work.  I knew I needed something bigger, but really didn't want to go and buy another piece of furniture.  Then I remembered that we had a white wicker chair up in the attic.  It has been up there for more than ten years and I really couldn't remember exactly what it looked like and I also wasn't sure of it's exact dimensions, but it was worth a try.  

I have no idea how we got this chair up in the attic in the first place.  It was next to impossible to get it out of the attic.  It didn't fit through the opening.  We literally had to push it out scraping up the legs a bit, which didn't matter since I would be painting it.  It took a little bit of vision, but I could see that it would be so much nicer if I painted it a darker color.

Image

This Pottery Barn wicker chair was the look I was going for.

My chair has similar lines, and since I already owned it, it was worth trying to spray it.

Last week we had one warm day - well not exactly balmy (48 degrees), but warm enough to spray paint (especially since the chances of it being that warm again probably won't happen again until April.  This is what it looked like after one coat of Rustoleum Leather Brown.

It took three coats total to cover all of the white.  Then I dry-brushed on a combination of black and grey paint to give it some dimension.  

That white splotch you see on the top right is just the light hitting it from above.  The yellow pillow is from Pottery Barn.  I recovered the foam in fabric I already had making a box cushion cover.  Stop back tomorrow for a full tutorial.  

One more thing - we must discuss the new lampshade for this table lamp.  I picked it up at Pottery Barn when I bought the pillow and it is the perfect color for the lamp that I painted a while back with AS chalk paint in Duck Egg. 

Here is the lampshade before.  I love this brown silk shade.  However, it is about an inch or so wider than the table top on the lamp, and in person it doesn't look right.

Also, when I moved the lamp to the other side of the room, the brown shade really was just too big and blocked the picture behind it.  The new lampshade is a better size - I think.

What do you think?  I'd love to hear your opinion.

-Judy

Hitchcock Chair Makeover

My mother-in-law is in the process of cleaning out her New York home to move full time to Florida.  She offered me a Hitchcock chair to do with as I pleased.  I had never heard of one, but based on her verbal description of it, I was sure that I could do something with it.  It's called a Hitchcock chair because it is manufactured by the Hitchcock chair company.  Here's the before and after:

I loved the lines of the chair, and I knew that a little paint and some topography, I could make this chair into something special for my home.

I started by lightly sanding the entire chair.  My plan was to use Annie Sloan chalk paint so sanding wasn't really necessary, but I find it helps get off some of the dirt and dust that accumulates over the years as well as roughing up the surface.

I taped off the seat and got out my chalk paint in Old White and went to work.

After one coat I realized that this was going to be tedious, and so I switched over to spray paint in Heirloom White (which is almost identical in color to Old White).  Once I switched over to spray paint, I covered the entire seat so as not to get any paint on it.

Once the paint was dry, I started to lightly distress the edges.  Since the chair was originally black, it made it very easy to distress since the black shows through.

Then I went to The Graphics Fairy  and picked out this beautiful graphic for a French floral shop.

I used charcoal on the back of the graphic to do the transfer.

Then using a pencil I traced over the design transferring it onto the chair.

Then I used a Sharpie and traced over the letters.

I applied clear wax and then a dark wax to the whole piece.

In person the chair has so much depth created by using both the clear and dark waxes.  

So what do you think of my chair makeover?

Can't wait to hear what you think.

-Judy

Ikea Malm Hack

My brother and his wife and their 2 1/2 year old twins just moved into a new home.  I am decorating both of the kids bedrooms (they have a boy and a girl).  They had an Ikea Malm dresser that they wanted to use in one of the kids rooms.  They gave it to me and told me I could do whatever I wanted to do with it.  I decided I would use it in their son's room.

I started by lightly sanding the entire thing just to rough it up to make the paint adhere better.

I chose the color Newburyport Blue by Benjamin Moore in their Ben formulation which is low VOC.  

I removed the drawers and painted them with two coats.

I did the same with the body of the dresser.

Then I drilled two holes in each draw 6 1/2" in from each edge and centered from top to bottom.

I wanted to come up with a fun design for a 2 1/2 year old that would grow with him for a while.  I also knew I wanted to incorporate his favorite color - red.  So using my Silhouette machine I created three stencils (one, two and three).  I installed the bottom knobs only so that I could get a frame of reference as to where I wanted the stencils.

Then using red paint I stenciled the words onto the dresser.

Then I added two coats of clear polyurethane to protect the piece.

What do you think?  I can't wait to get started on his room.  We are going there on Sunday and both rooms will be worked on then.  By next week I should have some photos to share with you of the finished (hopefully) rooms.

Also, you can click here to enter my Ugly Sofa slipcover giveaway.  Today is the last day to enter.
The winner will be announced tomorrow.

-Judy