Painted buffet with hutch.

I am not going to talk about money, or our financial situation, but let’s admit that moving to Australia, having a baby 9 months later, and building a new house, was expensive.

Now, I don’t mind not having all the money in the world to buy me all the expensive things I seem to fall in love with when we go through furniture shops. I like using what we have and add to our home when we find something special, or cheap, or even free…. (We will get to the free stuff later sometime. I have plans, many plans. Always plans.)

Anyway.

I saw this buffet with hutch on Gumtree, for 70 Australian dollars I think it was. Not a fortune, and it is still sturdy and a much needed item to fill up our large house that had not much in it.I can’t find a good before picture of it, and it never dawned on me to do an actual before picture before I started painting it. Whops. But there we have it, full of my thrifted frames on top.

 First thing we did was to remove the doors and take of the hardware and placed them in bags and wrote on the bags some note that made it clear which door they belonged too for future reference. It is easier to reuse the holes already made and have the doors sit perfect and not have to fiddle around with it later.

My son was happy to pitch in and help me with some sanding and later painting. It was nice not to have to do all this on my own.

Sand with the grain! whoops. 

I don’t believe in total serenity when I get to work, some welcome entertainment on laptop is very welcome while painting. Here I am watching my favourite DungeonMaster Matthew Mercer and his Crew in Critical Role

Here the hutch is finished painted, I think I used three layers in the end. I love how that colour just brings out the wood. (Same paint I used for my Tallboy chest of drawers.) 

And now to my brilliant, or not so brilliant way of painting the doors. Stuffing papers in under the edge would surely make painting this door easy! Pfft. First of all, it took probably more time than masking to stuff the papers into the cracks, secondly, I didn’t remove them right after painting because I had to make more than one coat of paint. This made the paper a close to permanently fixed to the door…

The only way to save this was to take the window out, and scrape it free of paint and paper. Nice! I love this kind of work! (Not really, but I pretend.) I carefully pried the little wooden frame away from the door, and it was so thin it snapped on one of the doors. It was the top part so it was easily fixed by gluing it back into one piece and then nailing it back on once dry.

Lesson here is to use masking tape.

Now that the windowed doors were finished we started working on the bottom ones. These were doors my son demanded to finish himself, because he wanted to paint and I didn’t let him paint the first three because of the windows. He started high in spirits but then realized how much job this really was, and got a bit sloppy. We agreed that I would take over the painting, and after sanding/scraping off drips I continued. I must add that his first door were done just as I had asked, but then, you know, he tried to rush it. (Don’t we all sometimes?)

We put the dried parts together and admired our work. I know I am not the best of interior decorators, but I suppose I have my style. I call it “Cassual and Lived in”- Style. Note the Koala bears on top that I knitted before moving down under. You can’t tell from that distance that they are, in fact, Koala bear firefighters…. (What?)

 I found these on Bunnings and thought they would just make the whole piece lovelier, it has some of the same gold tones as the hinges, ( not quite but close enough for me,) and they just hang there so prettily!

And here it is in all its glory!

Perhaps no masterpiece, though my interior decorating and poor picture-taking-skills are not helping it one bit to show of its beauty. By the way, it is hard to take picture of something and not show up as a ghost in the reflection of the windows!

If you want to have a look at my first painted furniture go here.

Thank you for the visit and be happy crafting!

Chest of drawers makeover journey.

I jumped to the chance of getting a free tall boy drawers from some friends of ours, as they were moving away and saw the chance to lighten their load so to speak. It was a much loved item, and painted in festive bright colours and had plenty of stickers on it. I can only imagine the children having fun decorating it! It was not quite what I saw fitting with our interior so I decided to test out staining wood with tea, coffee, vinegar and steel wool. 

The reason why I chose to go that way with this furniture was; 1. I love to try out new things. 2, it is very cheap!

This was, as said earlier, a chance to try something new, hoping I would strike gold at first trial, (Not a very likely thing.) and watched as many videos on YouTube that I could find on this matter, and reading a few posts on the internet to prepare myself for the task.

(I will link a video at the bottom that will explain how and why this staining wood works, as they have already done a good job doing just that.)

What I saw most in these video's was the fact that the stains did not get that deep colour that I wanted paired with light grey paint meant for the main body of my tall boy drawers, and had heard mentioned that adding coffee to the mix would make it darker so I thought, ‘Ha! I will use so much coffee it will be super dark brown for SURE!’. Now even if that is the case, I might have gone overboard just a little. *coughs* But we live and learn.

I made my vinegar and steel wool (the soapy one.) in an old jam jar. (No pictures, sorry.) I didn’t measure it at all, it was just pouring that vinegar in until I thought I would have enough to use on my drawers, top and edge around the bottom of the chest, and I overshot that with good measure.

While that was “cooking”, I had a big job of cleaning, sanding and cleaning again, until I had reached all the raw wood that I could without ruining anything (too much anyway….) 

This would be to the right of my
work space. (our lawn is not
very big at all.)

This would be to the left of my work space.
(Ignore all that clutter and stuff. I was already
working so hard I didn't care to tidy up
everything just for a picture *le'wink* )

Some clean and drying nextto my lovely old
chairs.

Some paint that just sat too deep, it is still
there to day, but it gives the piece a charm.

Cleaning in progress.

Clean....

And there it is, my own little blue box.

Some people might think that this is
a nice distressed item, though
I prefer it painted.

Anyway, back to the case.

The cocktail were brewing for a good three days. It was still clear, though worked as a charm once used.

On the day of the staining, I boiled lots of water, because I didn’t want to run out of the coffee/tea brew, and threw in 5 teaspoons of instant coffee into my, If I had to guess, two litre warm water, and two bags of some earl-grey sort of tea. I let it sit for an hour or two before starting to ‘paint’ it onto the surfaces I had sanded and cleaned, and a slight darkness happened to the wood, (that I guess is pine wood.) but nothing as dark as I had hoped. 

Without anything on, just clean and dry.

One little layer with coffee and tea mix
but it mainly just looks plain wet
at this point really.

The top, halfway through applying the first
go with the coffee.

I knew that the coffee and tea would not stain the wood for me directly, but adding tannin to the wood for the steelwool’vinegar to react with, so after a second coat of the coffee to all surfaces, I began the real magic. Vinegar cocktail did its job.

And more pictures ensues. 

This is right after applying the cocktail.

..And this is just a few minutes after that.
something is happening. 

Painted drawers, all in a row...

.. look at the darkness starting to show!
(poetic!)

By the next day they were much darker, and I found myself surprised to find them grey, not brown. (I blame the coffee for this, not sure if I have right to blame the coffee, but I do.) 

 So I thought, ‘Hey, coffee has lots of brown in it, let’s slap some more of that stuff on top, of everything and let’s see it go gold on me.’ And I did, and I also moved them from under cover and out into the sun. That could only help, or so I thought, and well still think…

They did change from that first grey to sort of pretty charcoal like tone, and even if this was not what I had planned and hoped for, I liked it enough to not sand it down and try it again. I was out on an adventure! We do not turn and stop for a slight change in plans! 

The next step were to seal in this new, odd but interesting colour under three coats of clear polythurane. This was easy enough, and the colour changed even more with this on top of the dark charcoal like surface I had created (and please take my word for it, as the pictures I managed to take of the process was not brilliant or well done at all, the colour was simply difficult to capture.)

I loved it simply more, and the wood grains show so well through it, especially if you tilt your head in a certain angle and the light just hit it right. (I need lessons in taking pictures.)

The garage works well as work space. Out with the
cars!

 

I had never painted a furniture in my life, but I took the challenge head on and started to apply two coats of water based paint and prime, low shine paint. 

All my mess and tools in one picture.

I love the colour, even if I spent hours studying the finished product with slight fear in my eyes for days after it was completed. The dark wood sort of make the grey look sort of purple’ish, something it wasn’t supposed to be, and it was getting on my nerves thinking white might have been better, or pure grey, but my nerves have calmed all the way down to super cool now. 

All I need is some proper drawer pulls, but I have not settled on the design yet. But until then you can enjoy this almost finished chest of drawers! *Cheers*

YouTube video that will explain staining this way. This is not my video, so all the credit goes to : mossisawesome, which is the username of the video creator. Enjoy!

Update!

I finally got some hardware on, and I am quite happy about it!

No picture is complete with out dusty floor, toes and a tiny kinder-egg car.

Hubby made me a template so I could make the holes and be confident they were uniform and on the level with the rest. We used the original hardware hole as the center of the guide and made sure it was correctly placed with an angle ruler. Very smart.

And here it is! I think the silver handles fits well with the whole thing. 

If you want to look at my other makes, feel free look at the Buffet and Hutch I painted.