I'm so addicted to before and after shots of furniture that's been renovated. I don't know why - perhaps I just love how creative people are, or the fact it's saving furniture from landfill, or maybe just breathing new life into something old.
The weekend engagement question prompts via 
We picked up this sideboard for free off a friend who was moving, and it's super handy - we store keys, coins and things like phone chargers. We don't have built in storage in our house so things like this are important. I've always hated, however, the dark glossy varnish and the distressed look, where someone thought they'd be creative by running some kind of tool over it to put marks all over the drawers and counter top.
As you can see by the mess, it's a bit of a halfway stop between the spare room and the kitchen where I'll 'dump' and pick it up on my way to that room later! I still hadn't managed to hang up the pictures since I painted that wall either so do excuse the mess. And that's lime pickle fermenting in salt as well. Sigh. I need to tidy up!
So, I got to sanding with an orbital sander! I stripped the drawers right back to bare wood, and the surface too. It wasn't as hard as I thought, and the pine underneath was nicely pale.
It was a little harder doing the legs and the bottom, breaking out a piece of sandpaper wrapped round a credit card to do into the corners. As I planned to paint this part black, all I needed to do was scuff off the gloss a little so the mineral paint had something to stick to.
Originally, I thought I'd do the top with a white wash varnish, as well as the drawers, with the rest painted black to add interest.
After a little googling of 'upcycled black furniture', I thought doing the drawers AND everything but the countertop black would look dramatically amazing!
I had a good search to find out what the best paint was. A lot of people use chalk paints but I heard they weren't as hard wearing andyou had to wax over the top. When I discovered Fusion mineral paints, I realised that they were a lot better as they stuck to surfaces really well and wore a lot better - plus, I found a stockist in the next town over, saving me on postage or driving around for it!
After two hard days of work, it was ready to paint.
In my next post, I'll show you what colour I actually decided to paint it, and the final result!!
You might like dark furniture, and I do too - but only if it's intentionally meant to be dark, like mahogany or redgum. Fake dark I can't live with. Besides, this piece had been unreasonably distressed - not your usual patina of hard wear, but intentional divits and sand marks which I hated.
First of all, you've got to be prepared to sand, sand, sand. I would never have taken on this task without an orbital sander and some 80 grit sandpaper to remove the varnish. If it's an older piece, you'll need to be careful it doesn't contain lead - don't worry too much unless you're ddoing it all the time, but use a face mask so you don't breath it in. An 80 grit is perfect for heavy varnishes, but a light one, start at 120, then use a 180 grit and finish with a 120. It's so rewarding, especially as the grain of the wood starts coming out.
Now what I learnt is that pine is naturally yellow, so when you varnish it, even with a non yellowing varnish that you get these days, it'll darken. If you wet the top with a bit of water, that'll be the colour you get. I didn't want all the pinks, yellows and oranges in this to come out in the final version, so what I did was white wash it. You can see the wet one on the left, and the wet whitewashed one on the right. Big difference, right?
Keep in mind that this was only one of my weekend DIY projects - I have so many, including helping Jamie with our Landrover project, the garden, painting the laundry - aaaah, it goes on and on! It's Spring here in Australia so that might explain it....
I'll be finishing off the project tomorrow so I'll share the final result in an upcoming post!
Have you ever upcycled furniture? I'd love to see it in the comments below!
With Love,
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