Tired of the old look on your wood furniture? Found some old furniture in a dumpster? We have always heard the saying "from trash to treasure" and never thought it would be possible to make something you find in a trash can, a treasure. We were proved wrong! We did find some cabinets some people considered trash and with some enthusiasm and dedicated work, we managed to turn them into our own unique piece of treasure. We refinished them completely from "head to toe" and ended up with a new look on a set of cabinets that added a new classy touch to our living room.
Staining furniture can be a real challenge, but it is a relatively easy and inexpensive way to dress up unfinished or old finished pieces of furniture. Stains are available in a wide variety of wood tones. Whether you like light colors or dark, you will be able to find a color that suits your decor. We decided to get wild and went with a dark "ebony" color - we had in mind an Oriental look, so with the addition of some nice brass hardware, the idea was brewing.
The first step to staining is the hardest of all. It requires a main ingredient: patience. If you have a piece of furniture with an old finish, you need to strip it. Stripping can be messy and it calls for several steps, but in the end you won't regret having gone through this tedious task. The materials you will need are a good stripper, a plastic scraper, steel wool, mineral spirits and lots of disposable gloves to begin with. Apply a thick coat of stripper and let it sit, following the manufacturer recommendation.
After you've waited, put the scraper to use and scrape away! For the toughest places, we used the steel wool. We also applied several coats of the stripper after the first one, since our cabinets seemed to have not only stain but varnish as well. Quite a challenge! If your furniture have some grooves or corners that are hard to get to with the scraper or steel wool, use a tooth pick or something with a pointy end. That will help!
Once the stripping is done, you need to clean the furniture with a cloth and some Mineral Spirits. If you see some areas with a leftover stain that was stubborn to go away, grab a piece of steel wool and scrub the excess. After the cleaning is done, is time to have some fun! With either a staining rag or an old shirt, apply the stain following the manufacturer's directions. In our case, we went with a dark stain so the more coats we applied, the darker the color was getting. After the stain is dry, apply a protective covering - we used Polyurethane oil based satin finish, but if you prefer a shinny look, you can always choose semi-gloss or gloss finish. Follow the directions on the can and let dry.
All this taken care of, we put on some new hardware to dress up these old cabinets and ended up with a new look in the room, plus more storage!
 Cabinets BEFORE  Stripping product at work  Stripping the cabinets  Old finish stripped  Stripped doors  Finished cabinet |
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