The Re-ReBirth of a Coffee Table

Before Mary headed off to Peru, I created a list of all of the projects that I had been meaning to do (and some that I hadn't) so that I wouldn't get bored without her.

This project here is a coffee table that Mary found on Big Trash Pick-up Day when she was 16. It's been with her through high school, college and married life and it was time to give it a makeover.

As usual, I forgot to take a "Before" picture. In the picture below, though, you can mostly see the old finish-- if you don't pay attention to where I had already begun removing the finish with stripper and a scraper. The table had a lot of problems, but here's a map of its most notable landmarks:


And that worked for a while- to get the main stuff off- but I eventually had to switch to the electric sander to make it a really clean finish. Then I used sandpaper on the edges and the little grooves where the sander couldn't reach.

And from all of that hard work came this guy:


Then I tried putting on a Medium stain, which came out SUPER light, so I switched to a Dark Oak color and the results were this (sorry for the blurriness. I was using a broken camera):
The final step was applying a spar urethane finish to protect it from UV rays and water.

You can see how pretty it looks in our living room:
I also gave the legs and underside a rub-down with some stain to cover up any nicks and scratches. The color did end up still being lighter than it was originally, so it's like having a slightly brand new table.

Slightly.

What's Old is New Again.

At long last all of the bedroom furniture has been refinished and stained to match. It took 3 days but the dresser is finally finished.

This is a part of a bedroom set that has belonged to Mary's great-gandmother, grandmother, aunt & mother. Because of the finish it was considered pretty poor quality and because of many generations of chain-smokers with unruly children it was in pretty poor shape. But we dug under the surface to find something great.

I sanded off all of the old yellowed varnish, polished and sealed the old brass pulls, stained the wood a nice dark cherry red, and polyurethaned it all for a satin finish.

Here is the dresser at the start of this project. It's not as dusty as it looks.

Under the first piece I took off I found fingerprints in the dust from the past.


I then continued to take all of the pieces apart until I was just left with the skeleton of the dresser.

Underneath all that yellowing lay a nice reddish piece of wood. See below for a piece before and after sanding.

Once all the pieces had been sanded it was time to line up all the pieces in the garage to begin staining.

And then the final product.

The 7 Year Swivel Chair Project

About seven years ago, Mary spotted an old beaten up swivel chair near one of the dumpsters at K-State. The chair's seat was torn up, one of its wheels had come off, and it was generally worn but Mary saw potential in it. We took the chair home. We then broke the chair down and placed it in a box. In that box it sat for years and years until I finally decided to do something with it this past Memorial Day weekend.

I forgot to take photos of the chair before I started but you can see some of the original pieces in the photo below.

I repainted the brown metal parts, sanded and stained all the wood pieces, re-upholstered the chair and shined up all the shiny metal pieces. Now here's a bunch of it all coming together:

Who needs a rubber mallet?

Szechaun likes it!