Refurbishing & Refinishing

We have been moved in for over a year now. Most of the house repairs have been done. We did most of them last year while the weather was good for tackling those repairs. This year, now that the weather is good for the summer, we are back on track for fixing things-things about the house or our own personal things.

Last summer we did not get to the hall bathroom shower. It was leaking under the house. Our solution was to not use it until we could get to it this summer. Mr UAW fixed it! It turned out that a new faucet was needed, a trip to the local home improvement store had what was necessary to fix it. Now we have 2 showers that work.

   

We stopped at a garage sale last month and I found sewing material, fill a bag for $6. How could I turn that down? I found material to use for a shower curtain. A trip to the local superstore and I had grommets to use for the top. I've never put grommets in material before but it worked great and now I had a shower curtain. Since I did the curtain I wanted to paint the cupboards. I made my own chalk paint from leftover paint (Pinterest has lots of recipes for chalk paint) and I had some dark wax left over from my hutch project last summer.  Used together and I have the cupboards redone!

    

Next on my list was a dresser that used to be my grandmother's. While we lived in CA we refinished the small one but for some reason didn't get around to the tall one. I know that if you're looking to sell old pieces you shouldn't refinish them, refinishing them devalues them. But I wanted to keep them and they were so bad that I didn't want to put anything in them. We just took the old finish off of them, left the original stain on them, and oiled them for a finish. Now they look like a nice pair.

Our next project was our kitchen table. It is something that Mr UAW had refinished years before we were married. He used to refinish furniture for a living. This is a oak harvest table from the late 1800's to early 1900's. It was in the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and was badly burned. When Mr. UAW first did this piece he had a big job to do. He took it all apart, he had to replace some pieces, there was much sanding to remove burned areas. When he finished it was beautiful. It is very heavy. Fast forward many years and this table has been used as a family table as my girls were growing up. The combination of children, and living in the kitchen to be used as extra counter space, and a family eating off of it, and things being placed on it that probably should not have been placed on it had left it looking very old. It was time to refinish the main part of the table, the extra harvest leaves were still in fine shape but the top needed some help.
Before picture shows the burn mark in the center from something too hot being put on it and there is a moldy spot in the corner-moisture from a planter. There was also many scrapes and dents on it that don't show up in the picture.



The during pictures-here it is all opened up, without the top piece. You can still see the burned areas that Mr. UAW left from the original refurbishing.

Here are some of the refinishing pictures:

Stripper has taken off first layer of lacquer-burn mark gone but mold still there

All lacquer off and mold sanded off

Now stained and drying for 3 days

Now has 3 coats of polyurethane

The hardest part of this whole project is working with the stripper. It is nasty stuff. Adequate ventilation is required-hence we are working outside. Chemical resistant gloves are necessary, you don't want to get this stuff on your skin. 

Then we had to wait a few days for the polyurethane to dry. A final coat of mineral oil rubbed in with #0000 steel wool and we were ready to put it all back together. 

Jack, the grand dog, supervising Mr UAW putting the table back together

Now it's all back together and looks better. We are going to leave it open for a week or so because it will help it all to lay flat.

   

The next project: kitchen counters! It should be interesting because it needs to be done and we have to do it ourselves. It costs too much to hire it out. We've researched what we want to do and feel like we are able to do it. So... to be continued...