We have been slowly decorating our spare bedroom. I took pretty much all the furniture out of there, moved the twin bed into the basement bedroom (which now actually looks nice and completed… perhaps one day I’ll show you. It just needs some pictures and a mirror hung up). We are planning on getting Queen size bed into for this room for guests. It was painted a very fresh green by the previous owners, but we recently painted it a very pale lavender. The colour flows nicely with the light gray in the living room, dinning room and hallway, as well as the off white in the master bedroom. It also looks a lot brighter, which is saying something because this is easily the room in our house that gets the most light.
I must have been mad to start this project in the middle of the heat in August. Well, the project really started two years ago when we went to a New Years Day auction and brought home this dresser.
A year and a half later I finally began the process of refinishing it. I donned the breathing apparatus, goggles, big gloves and long sleeves, and took paint thinner to this bad boy while listening to an audiobook on my ipod. Of course you want to know the name of the book don’t you? I was listening to A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness. It took me two days to get all the paint scrapped off. Mostly because you have to paint on the paint thinner, wait for it to bubble off a bit (takes about 2-3 minutes), scrape it, repaint it with paint thinner, scrape it again, etc. Each surface has to be done about 5-6 times, and there was only one coat of paint on this dresser. The paint was pretty old. I’m pretty sure it was lead based. It took me two afternoons. Mostly because it was really hot outside, and you just got bored of painting and scraping and sounding like Darth Vader.
Then I filled some gauges in the wood with wood filler, and after that was dry we took the palm sander to it. I sanded about half before my hand got terribly numb, then S took over and finished it off. We sanded once with the more abrasive sandpaper, then with the fine stuff.
Next step was staining it. Of course I chose my favorite stain colour, Dark Walnut by Minwax. The great thing about buying a house is that sometimes you get free stuff. There is a giant mirror behind our shed, a dehumidifier was left behind, and we got lots of paint amongst other things. We also acquired this can on stain, among a couple others, and some polyurethane. I gave it one swipe of stain, letting it seap for about two minutes before taking a rag and wiping off the excess.
The next day I started polyurethane coats. I gave it three coats of polyurethane, with a very light finishing sand in between coats.
Here is a sneak peak of the result.
The room colour has since been changed, and I just picked up some knobs for the drawers over Christmas. They have not yet been affixed.
