More Kitchen Cabinet Progress, and a New Sofa!

I'm still plugging away at refinishing the kitchen cabinets.  I got more of the lower cabinet faces, doors and drawers done.  I'm now almost half way done with the whole job.

Here's a before shot of the area I worked on this weekend.  Stripping the paint off the lazy susan in the corner was tiring, but I'm getting pretty fast at it.

 

Here's the lazy susan after shellacking and installing the repainted handles.  

I have the three doors off and in process.  I'm hoping that my evenings this week will be enough to get the doors done and the upper cabinets stripped and done.

So, my latest score came today.  I found this danish-style wood sofa frame for pretty cheap because it's missing all its cushions.  

The straps in the photo above are made from lawn chair strapping!  I'll replace those with correct

 straps.  I like the lines on this sofa, especially the back.

The wood is a good match with our pair of Selig Z chairs, so I'm pretty excited. I'd really like to find the Selig Z sofa frame to go with the Z chairs, but until I do this will be a great stand in. I'll do a follow up post on the sofa as I get it cleaned up and have some cushions made.

Project: Refinish Lane Acclaim tables, part 2

OK, picking up where we left off on the project last time --

Next for the two-tiered end table, I hit a few spots with 220 grit sandpaper, and then went over the whole table with extra fine 0000 steel wool.  Then I wiped all areas down with mineral spirits and let the table dry, which didn't take long.  Here's what it looked like at that point:

As you can see, the side wood and dovetail areas are much lighter from the stripper.  I debated with myself and decided that I would not re-stain at first.  

I've had good success with Howard's Restor-A-Finish.  This stuff will cover up small scratches and bring back some color, so instead of using a stain, I wiped the whole table down with the Walnut variety of Restor-A-Finish and let that sit for about an hour.  

Then I wiped off the excess, and at that point, this is what it looked like:

The light areas are still not nearly as dark as they were before. 

But honestly, I like it this way, so that's all the staining work I'm doing.  Sorry if you were hoping I would figure out how to get it back to the exact finish it was originally.  Oh well.  My table.  :-D

To finish the table off and protect it, I'm using  this Minwax product.  

I like that this stuff wipes on. No brushing or spraying to run or streak.  Grab a clean cotton cloth, wipe it on, let it dry, do a once over with extra fine steel wool and wipe down the whole table again so you don't have little steel wool fragments laying around, then repeat with a second or third coat of the Wipe-On Poly and I'm  done - except for masking off the leg bottoms and adding a coat of black paint, which is how they were originally.

So here's the two-tiered end table after two coats of poly and with the black paint renewed on the legs.

(That lump on the chair on the left is just Miss Patchelina - she thinks that Z chair is hers. Ha!  She is sooooo wrong.)

I'll be finishing the coffee table the same way, and once that's done look for final photos of that table too.

Overall I'm happy with how these turned out.  

If I wanted the tables to be darker as original, I would suggest  not using strippers but lightly sanding and refinishing with a dark stain like walnut, and probably using multiple coats to get the darker look.

Z chairs get spruced up

While I've been banished from the kitchen today (except for when the trash needs to be taken out) I figured I would try the Mr. Modtomic treatment on the pair of Selig Danish Z chairs I blogged about the a couple months ago.

I've had them several years, and the wood was looking scratched, dinged, and dry.

I've seen some of the furniture Mr. Modtomic has given new life to over on his blog, so I picked up a can of this Howard Restore-A-Finish and some Howard Feed-N-Wax.

All you need to do is dip some extra fine steel wool in a small puddle of the Restore-A-Finish and rub it into the wood.  Wipe off the excess and let the piece sit for 30 minutes, wipe again, then with a clean cloth wipe on the Feed-N-Wax.  Rub the wax in well and you're finished. One of the two chairs has some rough spots that I may eventually go over with some sandpaper, but for now, they look a heckuva lot better than they did before.

 I think this stuff works great and it's easy.  

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!