Buffet Reveal: Distressing Painted Furniture with Stain

I finished my {new-to-me} antique buffet. Using my fail-proof method of distressing painted furniture with stain, this came together beautifully...

and it's a piece I'm super proud of.

I've been looking on {actually, stalking} Craigslist for the last two years looking for an antique buffet. The problem was...most of the ones on there were already refinished {where's the fun in that?} or way out of my budget...or only sold with an elaborate dining set. 

And then I came across Ashley's ad. We met and instantly hit it off. She showed me her grandmother's antique 100+ year old buffet and my heart went pitter-patter. She was so kind and gave me a good deal on the piece...and even separated it from the dining set it was listed with. And now...she reads this crazy blog of mine {hiiiiiii, Ashley!}.  


She was very quick to point out a few flaws in the finish when I looked at the piece...I wanted to let her know up front that I planned to refinish it. Sometimes Craigslisters may not love the fact that you're taking a beloved piece of theirs and completely changing it up, but she was super excited about it. She was so kind and told me several times that she was happy it was going to someone who really wanted it.

And, I really wanted it. Like a two-year itch, I did. 

The gang's all here. These are all of the products I used to refinish this. The red is Valspar's Fabulous Red...and it totally lived up to its name. 

I love to use a spray stripper. I feel like I have more control that way. And I'm a *slight* control freak. I use the scraper to pull the previous finish off, after the stripper had sat for about five minutes.

No stripper jokes today, friends...I think I stretched that out a bit too much in the last furniture refinishing post and made my mom's friends all blush and call each other. 

I digress...

I have to be honest, the stripping product didn't work as fabulously on this piece as on previous ones. So, it was back to basics. Or semi-basics, I suppose, I pulled out the sander. I started with 150 grit sandpaper and worked my way to 300 sanding the top down.

It took over two hours to sand the top of it down. But, man...it was worth it. 

I got it down to the bare wood and it was so soft and perfect to the touch.

It soaked the stain in beautifully. B-E-A-utifully.

I use the staining pad when just straight-staining a part of a piece. And I still love this look of a stained top and a painted bottom. To be clear, I'm referencing furniture here.

I did four coats of stain on top. {Sometimes I just can't leave well enough alone}.

I sanded with 400 grit paper between the first two coats of stain 

{I also left room for plenty of drying time in between staining and sanding}. 

Instead of stripping the bottom, too, I used the Zinsser primer that is designed to cover anything {because I wasn't 100% sure what the original finish was, as in oil based or not?} This primer really works...I painted a mirror with it, for crying out loud.

Then it was on to the red. It took three coats. Three. But, I persevered.

Truthfully, it could have probably taken a fourth coat, too. But that would have sent me to the looney bin. Each coat took 24 hours to dry...so the three coats took three full days. And I'm just not a patient person.

After letting the last coat dry overnight, I went at the painted areas with the sander.

So many of you have chatted with me about this method, so I made a video just for YOU with the step-by-step process:

You can watch it here. 

Again, to see the complete "aging with stain" process, 

watch my video on this piece, here.

After the aging, I went over the entire piece with satin polyurethane {I did the top twice and sanded lightly with 400 grit sandpaper in between coats}.

I opted to leave the hardware in the original state. I thought about using some Brass-O to clean it, but I decided the aged bronze was a bit more true to the shabby finish I gave her. And truly, I've never redone a piece in which the original hardware was in such great shape that I could use it on the refinished piece. This was a very well-cared for piece!

The only other thing I may go back and do later is mod-podge a pretty patterned paper into the cabinets and drawers {just on the inside}. 

I love how it turned out. 

The stained top with all of its marble-y goodness is my fave.

I can't wait to get her into my kitchen and really enjoy the heck out of her. Can you imagine how pretty all of the Thanksgiving pies will look displayed on this? I'm giddy. 

Do you have any furniture projects on your summer to-do list?

{I still have three more pieces in my garage awaiting refinishing...another day!}

{i linky-party here}

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Dining Room Makeover {On a Budget}

 

My six-month dining room makeover was complete two days after Thanksgiving. 

Oh the irony.

It was still very usable and worked out great for Turkey Day...I just happened to stumble onto the six most delicious Craigslist chairs the Saturday following the "big" day {and by stumbled onto, I mean I've been stalking four separate Craigslist city lists for them for the entiresix months}. Their purchase brought the never-ending dining room makeover to a close and within budget thanks to my good money management. Amen and hallelujah.

And truthfully, the dining room wasn't even on my makeover list for this year...it sort of just "happened". You may remember the saga from June...

"If you give Kristi new floors, she'll want to paint the walls before they're installed. And if she decides to paint the walls, she'll want to paint stripes. And if she's repainting the walls with stripes, she'll want to redo the window treatments. And if she's redoing the window treatments, she'll want to paint the backs of the hutches blue to match the new window treatments. . ."

I've said it before, but the previous decor was quickly turning into Sunday dinner at Grandma's. And I am more of a Saturday Night Supper Club kind of gal {at least that's how I picture myself in my mind...I suppose technically more of an on-the-couch-sweatpants-wearin'-watching-Downton-Abbey-with-a-diet-soda-in-one-hand-and-laptop-in-the-other kind of gal. Potato-PotAHto}.

I didn't think too much of my old dining room until an older lady from church {and I mean older with all due respect} came by one day. She told me my dining room reminded her of her mother's current dining room...at the nursing home. I about died, y'all. 

So when I realized we were getting the new floors, I turned to David and told him I was going to take on redoing the dining room while we were in the process of redoing the floors. Seemed easy enough. {Insert eyeroll}

Looking back, I'm quite thrilled I was dumb enough to take on the project in the midst of the craziness of installing new floors. My stupidity resulted in something I'm actually kind of proud of. 

Buh-bye, nursing home decor.

 

I've done tutorials and posts over several of the projects in here over the past few months. Here's the breakdown {click on the links to see the full posts}:

1. Painted Drop-Cloth Drapes

2. DIY Drapery Rods on the Cheap

3. Grandma's Dresser Gets a Makeover

4. DIY Starburst Mirror {Made from Posterboard & Love}

5. Painting Stripes Easy & Flawlessly

6. Gussied Up Dollar Store Candle Holders

7. New Vinyl "Wood" Flooring

The green took quite a bit of primer and paint to get rid of. The beauty of getting the new flooring was skipping the drop cloth ritual. Liberating.

Again, I have a tutorial on how we created the flawless stripes in here.
We did them on the two shorter walls to add more depth to a short & squatty room.

And next came the flooring installation. Oh, sweet Jesus, this was a crazy day.

But soooooo worth it.
Nothing like a nice new palette to work with.

Next, I created the DIY Drapery Rods.

These were inspired by Allison from The House of Hepworths.

These ended up being a necessity after I realized how heavy the drapes were. Gah.

After the rods came the drapery painting.

Which also created a lovely blue floor in my garage. 

Funny how drop cloths don't actually absorb paint.

Blue garage floor=fun and funky custom drapes

The Nester inspired me to make my own DIY Starburst Mirror out of posterboard.

Then I poked around in my parents' shed and found a dilly of a project:

my great grandmother's dresser. 

It got a fun makeover in my Oops Blue. 

I also pulled off the backs of the china cabinets and painted them with that Oops Blue as well. I painted the "wrong" side of them, so if I ever want to go back to the wood sides, I can just flip them back over.
These belonged to my late uncle, then to my mother, and about seven years ago, were passed on to me when my parents down-sized into their new home. My uncle did all of the leaded glass in the doors himself.

I truly wanted a new drum-shade chandelier in here...but at $500+, it just wasn't in my budget.
Maybe one day...

For now, I bought some sparkly beaded garland, in my favorite shade of blue, on our Salado trip and simply wrapped pieces of the garland on each arm of the chandelier, as well as one strand at the top.

It just adds some extra bling-a-ding-ding up there.

And of course, the night before Thanksgiving, I put together some centerpiece candles to use for our meal...which I'm really pleased with how they came out.
They started out as Dollar Tree candle holders! To see that tutorial, click here.

And the final touch....THE CHAIRS!

I've seriously been looking for Parsons' Style chairs for quite some time for this room. I wanted some that didn't have host/hostess chairs, so I could keep them just on the sides of the table. The table also belonged to my late uncle...and I LOVE the big chunky base legs it sits on. I wanted to nix those end chairs to show off her pretty legs. And I'm completely flabbergasted that I stumbled onto the perfect chairs on Craigslist. What a find! The previous owner was getting rid of them for a few minor reasons {nothing wrong with them...just not right for her home}. I was only too happy to take these off her hands for a bargain.  

I couldn't be happier with the new space. While I know the floors were a huge part of this makeover, we received those at no monetary cost to us. Which brought this makeover to less than $400 for everything...I was kind of excited about that one! Had I bought those chairs new, they would have been over $1,000 {I had been contemplating that purchase for the whole six months}. So happy I waited!!

  

DIY Mirror Turned Chalkboard

This was SUCH an easy-peasy project. Thanks so much to Jessica over at Mom4Real who inspired this project. She transformed a mirror this way and gave me an excuse to get it in gear with my mirror.

Would you believe this mirror was free? I kind of flipped when we got it. We purchased a dresser off Craigslist. It ended up being a really, really nice dresser that was photographed very, {VERY} poorly so we were the only ones who called on it (I said it was a God thing, my husband said it was lack of flash photography...ehhhh, potato-potAHto). We got it for a steal since the gal was desperate to get rid of it before she moved. The mirror wasn't apart of the ad, nor did I want a "dresser mirror"...I'm just not very matchy-matchy about furniture...I'm a bit random (with purpose, I guess...that makes no sense, but I'm sure a lot of you "get" me). The mirror was off on the side in her garage leaning on a wall. Right before we left, she told us it was going to Goodwill unless we wanted it. She had never used it either! SCORE!

{It did, however, weigh about as much as the dresser and proved an even greater challenge getting it in the truck. But we persevered!}

The goodies for this project. I bought the "good stuff" for primer...it said on the can that it adheres to shiny stuff. My chalk board paint was leftover from this project.

I started by priming the whole thing, frame and all. 

I let it completely dry overnight before grabbing the paint.

And...I'm so excited to tell you...I found my first legit can of OOPS paint! Seriously, I'm always so jealous of the gals who find five gallons of gorgeous "tobacco-road-esque" colors for like a buck. But, here's my very own can! And truthfully, the color is so pretty...now I've got to figure out how to duplicate it. It's a big old gallon, so it's also going on my kitchen island (the never ending project that's been disrupting my kitchen for the last 10 days...someone help me).

It went on b-e-a-u-tifully!!

And of course, where would I be without my palm sander? I dread the day that it's not cool to distress anymore. (If it's already not cool, and I somehow missed that memo, please don't tell me. I'm just fine living in denial amongst my weathered junk.)

 

Although a very odd thing to do, we hung it up before I added the chalkboard paint. I didn't think I could get a good cut in on the paint while it was laying down (and apparently not when it's upright either...geez, paint much? Oh well...good thing it's got a weathered look. ) This was right after I painted it...it's still wet in the pic.

 

After it dried overnight, I seasoned my board. I always feel like this is taking a new board on its maiden voyage. To season a new chalk board, go across the entire thing with the chalk on its side.

This helps prevent "ghost images" (of old chalk) showing through. After you wet-erase the "seasoning", it's ready to use!

Yes, it's in my living room...not exactly a typical chalk board place, but I really, really wanted it there! I'm planning to write scriptures and inspiration on it daily. Although, it's said "Mirror Turned Chalkboard" for three straight days now...not sure how my big plans will work out! :)









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