Table of Contents
Introduction
Today’s project is going to be really fun. Three times a year over on Instagram I host a Furniture flipping challenge. I just invite fellow Furniture Refinishers to come and flip a piece with me and we throw some prizes in there just to make it a little more interesting, but I pick a theme and then we had two weeks to complete our piece. At the end of the two weeks, I picked my top three and then I had people come to my stories to vote for their favorite. So the winner is going to be featured at the end of this post. I participate in the challenge too. I picked a piece and I’m going to walk you through the piece that I did for the challenge.
Day 1 of Challenge
The theme for the challenge is Romance core or Coquette. Think whimsical, feminine, delicate. I got a good piece for it but I’m going to need your help help me decide what to do with it um I think it’s going to fit the theme really well but I could go a lot of different directions so let me show you what I’m doing so here’s the piece that I’ve chosen for the challenge it’s a Jacobean style um it’s really beautiful but unfortunately it has has quite a bit of damage on it you can see somebody try to maybe do some repairs there’s like some Putty there um so unfortunately on the sides and on those drawers just a lot of damage the Top’s pretty bad but I’m really going to try to save it uh strip that down but like I said a lot of really pretty details just not in the best shape so what do you think I have some design ideas you might be mad at me but I’m going to paint it I just think it’s going to look really beautiful painted it’s got a lot of damage on it and I’m going to try to highlight some of the beautiful carvings so um I need your help to help me decide what color so should I go with off-white blue soft blue uh soft green or dead salmon by pharaoh and ball so I’ll put them up on the screen you can um help me decide but vote and let me know what you think if you’ve been here you know I’m always trying new Applying stripper to top of dresser products so I love to try different strippers I’m looking for a little bit safer one and so I found this one it’s called smart strip and I found it you can get it on Amazon I’ll have it linked in the descriptions but you can also pick it up locally I got mine at Sherwin Williams so this is their Citrus um paint and varnish remover um smart strip also has a smart strip Pro and so I haven’t tried that one but I started with this one it’s a jelly substance so if you have a a vertical surface it’s really good for this but I’m just using it on the top and I’m going to go ahead and cover it with some plastic wrap let us do its thing and I’ll come back and scrape it off I’d like the front legs to match the top so I’m going to go ahead and sand those down to raw and see if I can treat them the same.
Applying Stripper to Top of Dresser
For the stripping I like to use a carbide scraper in combination with like a putty knife I go very lightly cuz carbide scrapers can really gouge up your wood so I’m just I’m hardly putting any pressure on it so I’m just pulling it back and this stripper actually worked pretty good so my method is usually I pull it back as much as I can with a carbide scraper and then I use some lacquer thinner if I’m removing a wood finish I use some lacquer thinner to just kind of clean up that residue then I’ll come back with some more lacquer thinner in like steel wool like a fine steel wool or a scotch-brite pad or something it very light abrasive and I’ll try to get the rest of that finish off I also sometimes be able to use some wire brushes to get into some of the details and that’s kind of my method on how I strip.
Repairs
Okay day two of the challenge I have the top of the dresser stripped it was pretty rough but I thought you know I’m going to try to at least save the top cuz I really like wood tops even when I’m painting out a piece and so I think I’ll be able to save save the top think I’m going to I sanded down the legs yesterday I think I’m going to try to save the top of the front leg so I know I’ve already gotten a lot of people who are upset on painting it but you know in person sometimes it’s hard to see on camera um but the it’s already been through some repairs they didn’t do a very good job um it’s just pretty bad on the drawers and so um I’m just not going to be able to restore it so I have to also look at what I can get for it in the time and all that jazz and so the other piece there’s a two-piece matching set a Jacobian set I am trying to restore that to Wood but this one I’m sorry it’s just going to look so much better painted out so I’ve got to figure out a way to
kind of highlight those beautiful carvings but bear with me I think it’s going to look really good so let’s keep going.
Sanding
After I have all the fill done and I’ve glued up all the veneer that’s loose and filling in all the missing veneer and stripping that top and doing a lot of priming and painting and sanding here is the finished product what do you think I think it turned out really good I really debated on that top and what color to do it with but I think it provides a really beautiful warm tone and I think it complements the gold of the gilding honestly I had some gold on some of the other areas I had to really kind of restrain myself because you know gold can look really [ __ ] really quick and so I had to kind of pull back and and I actually took some of it off I did a little bit of highlighting on some of those areas there in the middle on the turnings you can see but like in the middle right there at the top I I started to put some gold there and then I took it off so I just did a very light gilding and I think it complements it well now that I’ve shown you my piece it’s time to move.
Prepping Drawers & Top for Paint
I’m going to go ahead and use it to refresh the hardware as well I already tested it and they are not real brass so I’m going to go ahead had and jazm up a little bit with some of the gilding I ended up doing two coats on them I’m going to use my finger and just apply some gold wax to the edging on the drawers now I’m ready to apply my sealer I’m using Osmos hard wax oil it’s really.
2nd Coat and Sanding Drawers
Okay second coated primer is on I had some problems I watered it down too much and then it started running in some places so I typically use bellac primer because it just really covers any kind of bleed throughs um but it is solvent based so I switched over to two on my second coat I switched over to their waterbase one two3 primer and it’s so thick so I always have to water it down to get it through my gun but I was in a hurry and watered it too much and so I’m still looking for the perfect primer I really love B shellac because it does everything I just don’t like cleaning it up and it is so smelly and toxic so I really wanting to try water-based I did hear of a water-based primer um that I want to try it’s called ecro I think it’s i c o and it’s like an Italian coating so it’s supposed to be really good um it’s supposed to be able to block um tannins really well and all that kind of stuff the bellac does it’s supposed to do too so I’m going to check into that but for right now I’m still using um Zinger which I do like it’s just sometimes the ease of use isn’t there so got my paint picked out hopefully I’ll get the first coat on today I’ll show you in a little bit what it is it’s paint day I ended up doing another coat of prime this morning after I had those runs yesterday it just shows you that when you’re in a hurry you don’t usually do your best work so I know that I just didn’t take my own advice so slow down and you’ll do your best work but I got it all sanded down yesterday did another coat of primer this morning got it sanded down so we are ready for color are you ready to see what I chose let’s go.
Painting
Now I’m ready for the fun part I am using Posh chalk pigments and I’m using pale gold and I’m using lemon gold and I’m just kind of doing a little bit of each of them and then you mix them with their infuser and I found these really great brushes I found them that somebody else was doing some gilding and they linked them so I bought them on Amazon they’re linked down in the description if you want to get them but they’re really easy to hold they have lots of different SI sizes it helped me really get into those fine details so it’s like liquid gold is basically what I’m putting on here but I’m just slowly steady going around each of these little areas I’m not trying to completely fill every little spot and be completely perfect I’m just trying to kind of highlight these areas if I get out of the lines you can just use a little bit of mineral spirits and it takes it right off you don’t want to rub too hard because you don’t want to remove the paint but it’ll just just a little brush and the mineral spr will take it right off.
Refinishing Top and Front Feet
Now I’m ready to apply my sealer I’m using Osmos hard wax oil it’s really easy to apply you just simply rub it on and then you wipe off the excess you can do two to three coats and it provides a really durable finish and a low luster shine.
Gilding Drawers and Hardware
Now I’m ready for the fun part I am using Posh chalk pigments and I’m using pale gold and I’m using lemon gold and I’m just kind of doing a little bit of each of them and then you mix them with their infuser and I found these really great brushes I found them that somebody else was doing some gilding and they linked them so I bought them on Amazon they’re linked down in the description if you want to get them but they’re really easy to hold they have lots of different SI sizes it helped me really get into those fine details so it’s like liquid gold is basically what I’m putting on here but I’m just slowly steady going around each of these little areas I’m not trying to completely fill every little spot and be completely perfect I’m just trying to kind of highlight these areas if I get out of the lines you can just use a little bit of mineral spirits and it takes it right off you don’t want to rub too hard because you don’t want to remove the paint but it’ll just just a little brush and the mineral spr will take it right off.
Sealing Top
Now I’m ready to apply my sealer I’m using Osmos hard wax oil it’s really easy to apply you just simply rub it on and then you wipe off the excess you can do two to three coats and it provides a really durable finish and a low luster shine.
After
Okay let’s look back at the before this was a beautiful dresser I love all the details I was sad that it had so much damage on it and it just wasn’t in a good good enough condition to refinish but I think it could be really beautiful painted out so after um glowing up all of the loose veneer and filling in all of the missing veneer and stripping that top and doing a lot of priming and painting and sanding here is the finished product what do you think I think it turned out really good I
really debated on that top and what color to do it with but I think it provides a really beautiful warm tone and I think it complements the gold of the gilding honestly I had some gold on some of the other areas I had to really kind of restrain myself because you know gold can look really [ __ ] really quick and so I had to kind of pull back and and I actually took some of it off I did a little bit of highlighting on some of those areas there in the middle on the turnings you can see but like in the middle right there at the top I I started to put some gold there and then I took it off so I just did a very light gilding and I think it complements it well now that I’ve shown you my piece it’s time to move.
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