My wife and I are novices at furniture restoration and up-cycling. So we are talking loads of ideas and inspiration and excitement. We are talking about lots of articles and videos, tik-toks and You Tubes. Oh man! This is exciting. Can't wait to get started.
We had taken on a couple of restoration jobs for ourselves to wet our feet. Thoroughly enjoyed ourselves and our confidence slowly grew.
We were asked by a family friend if we could sort out a little night stand for them. It was a white little cupboard with a drawer. We didn't ask any questions, we said - no problem. Went and picked it up from them and on the way home proudly - we started looking at each other and wondering what we had let ourselves in for. This little cupboard was what appeared to be duco sprayed, was in good nick and there was no surface that was untouched by paint so we had no way of knowing what was underneath all that paint.
We had done some prep - purchased a 1 litre tin of paint stripper and a couple of rolls of sand paper. Lets go. Ha ha. Ok - the first day - the paint stripper - the most violent we could find and asked for - barely made the the paint bubble. Ok, Ok, maybe we didn't leave the paint stripper on for long enough. So applied it liberally, thick - gel. An hour later, same non event. And surprise, surprise there is a grey primer layer underneath. Oh joy. Day one.
Challenge accepted. Game on. A whole tin of stripper later, (not cheap by the way), had to go back to the hardware store for sand paper and one little mouse sander is basically dead with a little twitch left in it.
My poor wife spent literally days just elbow greasing this little cupboard with scrapers and blades and even chisels.
I went and purchased a heat gun and that turned out to be relatively effective, but there was a learning curve involved as you had to take it easy so that you didn't burn the wood, but it certainly helped in all the curved areas and especially the corners which took extra care. There were attachments you could put on the heat gun that focussed heat in to the nooks and crannies.
Turns out the wood underneath was actually beautiful. I am guessing that it might be a walnut, but would love some feedback if possible. Was a hard wood for-sure.
We finished it up with a little linseed oil and delivered it back to the client.
Cuts, scrapes, split skin, bumps and bruises. Days of mindless slog. Was it worth it.
Well you be the judge, the client was over the moon and we learnt a couple of valuable lessons in the process.
