WIP Refinishings

I've been hit with the refinishing bug, and have been working away at several projects these past couple of weeks.

 

I have a lot (a lot!) of wooden things in my house.  Everything from furniture to bowls to boxes ... on and on it goes.  After having so much fun sanding down and painting some chairs for my daughter in the summer, I've lined up these smaller items to work on now.

 

A plain pine breadbox, which I plan to sand down and paint white.  It looks like it was homemade, but it's fairly clean inside & out.

 

 

I got it to this stage yesterday using the orbital sander (love that tool!).  Today I put one coat of white paint on it, but I bought the expensive stuff that takes 6 hours to dry for second coat (which it needs).

 

 

Next is a small stool that my great grandfather made.   I got it from my Great Aunt Mary's house (which was the family farm homestead) years ago.  It's always been coming apart a bit, and had a very dark stain, which is slowly wearing away.  I want to paint it white too for the bathroom, where I've always had it for my kids when they were young, and now to hold a basket of toilet paper.

 

 

I got it all sanded down yesterday too, but need to drive a couple of screws in before I paint it.

 

Now Stacy asked me about my rocking basket, which I said I was going to paint (but never did!).  I like the stained wood, but hate the painted strawberries on the side. 

 

 

So it got sanded down yesterday too.  Unfortunately, the outline of the strawberry painting showed up even after a thorough sanding, so I decided to just paint the whole thing white too ... I'm a little disappointed with the white paint on it, and wished I could have kept the natural wood.  Hopefully with the second coat of paint it'll look better.

 

The piece that took most of my time was this cute little smoking table.  We bought it many years ago at an antique flea market out Dundas way, and I always thought it would look nice painted white.  It's got a hideous, dark, poorly-applied stain on it that someone slapped on in a hurry just before we bought it ... it was still tacky when we brought it home.

 

 

After sanding it with the orbital sander yesterday for a good two hours, I found it was made from some rather nice wood.  I thought it might be cherry, but my husband thinks it's more likely walnut.

 

 

And that spoiled my plans for painting it white!  Now I'll finish up the sanding that I couldn't reach with the power sander and either stain it, or just put a clear varnish on it instead.

 

 

I'm not going to try and get the stain out of the decorative grooves, or the little dot in the door and on the sides ... I think it'll look okay with those a bit darker.

 

 

It has a delicate little latch ...

 

 

I also dragged a box out of the garage that was left here when we moved in.  I wanted to clean it up somehow, but didn't know how to accomplish this without washing the words away.  It was really filthy, and the inside is just as black as it looks in the photo.

 

 

 

So I sanded the inside and the bottom with the sander, which cleaned all the dirt off it and smoothed it out considerably.

 

 

When I wiped it off with a tack cloth, I just continued rubbing the tack cloth all over the outside and was amazed at how clean it came up just from that!  No need to wash it with water, and the printing stayed on.  Nice surprise there :)

 

Once I get the painting completed on the other pieces I'll show them all off.

 

Have a great day!

 

Wendy