Buffet Refinishing...

Not that this grand idea came from Pinterest but I thought this would be a good place to check for ideas.  I didn’t see any one pin specifically so I cannot credit anyone back but I did spend many hours scrolling and scrolling.  So lets see how do I begin this adventure?  Well after we had our wedding shower we got lots of wonderful gifts from our friends and family, but now we needed a place to put all of the stuff.  We did a major reorganizing of pretty much every cupboard to accommodate everything.  We also gave a nice donation to The Salvation Army. So I thought in reorganizing the kitchen we should update the dining room too!!! I was inhaling too much stain to truly be thinking straight.  I decided that adding a buffet/sideboard would be a wonderful idea.  So off we went to Ikea to find the perfect buffet and we did, we found two, this one was the right price and this one was the right look, size, organizational space, etc. but so hard on the price :  (. So after speaking to my very knowledgeable, smart father he informed me we could take the old buffet in his basement. Score!!!

So we loaded this baby up and off we went to make it our own.  Well I do not know about you but we have never refinished furniture before so we were going in blind.  We did some research and got an idea of what we needed to do.  So back to Home Depot we go to speak to a sales person in their paint department.  She was very helpful with what we would need, stripper, scrapers, sanding blocks, gloves, masks, tarp, brushes, and polyurethane.  So we clear out our dining room because there is no way we are going to work outside in freezing cold temperatures. Now it's time to begin...we apply stripper let it sit and then start to scrape and scrape and scrape.  So more stripper goes on and more scraping happens and still nothing!!! WTF!?! So now do I not only hate staining but stripping is going on the list too. 

Becoming frustrated with this very old piece of shit I mean furniture, I take an 80 grit hand block sander and go to town on a drawer.  Smalls nicely reminds me to go with the grain and instead of returning with some smart-ass remark I tell myself that we are growing and learning together. Ha!!! I am so growing and learning at this point!!! So my nice dear friend Mary lends us her electric sander to help with our un-strippable problem. YES!!! This has to work!!! I mean if harsh chemicals can’t remove that paint and lacquer, off then I don’t know what will.  So we plug that baby in and go to town. Hahahahaha!!! We are some really stupid humans right now!!! Yes so remember how I said we didn’t want to work outside in freezing cold temps?  Well we began sanding in our dining room and the dust started to fly and I do me fly!!!  Around two corners and up a flight of stairs!!! We halted and moved the buffet out to the barn to finish the job out there.  Smalls went out and sanded in the cold and I stayed in with the shop vac and vacuumed the shiz niz out of the house.  

It did not take long once we put a little electricity behind us.  Within a few hours the whole thing was a nice natural blonde.  Now came the fun part, staining!!!! Yippee!!! We had to move the buffet back inside to “warmer” temps.  I did all of the staining and it took 3 coats.  We had a ton of snow days packed in at this time of year so I got all of the staining in, in just a few days!!!.  I don’t understand why layers of stain become tacky and maybe I never will.  After it dried I applied a few layers of polyurethane.  While the buffet was drying we went in search of new pulls and knobs.  Measuring at 2 3/8” we could not find a pull that would fit.  So at this point it is our choice to sand the drawers and doors and fill the existing holes with wood putty, re-stain and buy brand new knobs and pulls.  Or get a can of spray paint and spray the old ones.  Hmmm…decisions, decisions.  We decided on the latter and got a can of copperish spray paint.  A few applications and they were done!!!!  Which now means…we can put the buffet back together!!!  Which also means the dining room can get put back together and the kitchen can get cleaned out of vacuums, trash bags, rags, screwdrivers, etc.

We did some shuffling and rearranging but we found a fit for the buffet.  We are super happy with how it turned out!!!  I have to say it is one my favorite rooms in the house.  Ever since we updated our living room we had an extra bookcase that we needed to find a new home for.  It found a nice corner in the dining room as our new bar!!! I will post about this later.  I also want to say that I love how the buffet looks under my cousin Roslyn’s painting she made for us.  She is an amazing painter!!!  Here is her website if you want to check out her fabulous work her name is Roslyn Onickel.  

Thanks again for reading this crazy adventure.

Andi