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Furniture Refurbishing

End Table Transformation: It's country, it's ugly. Something's gotta give!

The plan: To change this country catastrophe into an Art Nouveau masterpiece. 

And here's the catch for this little beast of a job: I have to get it done in under a week. My burst of energy and my vacation plans are a little off kilter this time. So, Ive gone and started a project right when Im supposed to be cleaning things up!  

Materials:

• End table purchased 10 years ago from a paint store that used it for paint technique target practice. (It was a bargain at $5.00.)

Stripping Materials:

• Furniture stripping chemical
• Heavy duty furniture stripping gloves
• Natural bristle brush for applying stripper (no this isnt going to be some kind of pornographic piece of art. I'll be applying some female pictures to it but theyll keep their clothes on. I promise.)
• Scraper tool
• Scrubby pad thingy for rounded areas
• Sand paper
• Lots of newspaper, plastic drop cloths, patience and will-power.

Staining Materials:

• Wood stain. I used Minwax Gel Stain in Walnut. The gel is great because you can do it on vertical surfaces with no dripping. It worked great.
• Latex gloves
• Bristle brush, foam brush or rag to apply the stain
• Rags to remove the stain (have a few of them handy so you can switch to a clean one every-so-often). This is a good time to use up those unattractive dish towels, t-shirts etc that you got as gifts and really never liked...If anyone asks what happened to that bright yellow Tahiti t-shirt with the fringe and beads, just tell them it was great and you got a lot of use out of it. So much so that you wore it out. Trust me. It's better this way.
• More newspapers, but not so much patience and will-power this time. Staining is really easy.

Decoupage Materials:

• Decorative paper(s)
• Mod Podge
• Brayer
• Sealant. (I love Minwax's "Polycrylic". It's TRULY clear. Absolutely no yellowing! And it dries fast.) If it needs to be outdoor safe, make sure you choose your sealer accordingly.
• Foam brush to apply sealer
• Very fine sand paper to sand between coats of sealer.

The paper I used is a collage of works by
 Alfonse Mucha, purchased in Prague, 1998.

Step 1: Strip. (just tell me when youve had enough of these jokes...)

Follow the stripper's instructions. (Had enough yet?) In my own personal fantasy land, this is a really cool thing to do to your furniture. In reality land, this job is quite possibly what is meant by "hell on earth". 

If you can get away with not stripping your furniture, (i.e. by spending the extra few bucks for unfinished furniture), I highly recommend that route. True, the end table only cost me $5.00 but when you add up the cost of all the Stripping Materials and the blood sweat and tears (I didnt cry, but the next morning I really really wanted to) Im pretty much up to the cost of some unpainted furniture. 

Of course, my thought when Im doing these projects is that when I do a project I buy the tools so that when I go to do it again I will already have everything I need. Thanks to my toy box project I have my own caulking gun! No home is complete without one of those! 

Unfortunately, I have a tendency to lose patience with my projects right about the time that I have to clean my tools and I end up 'accidentally' losing them in the pile of newspapers on their way to the trash. What do I need neoprene gloves for anyway? It's not like Im EVER going to attempt stripping furniture again! 

I did the entire stripping procedure in one Saturday, including a second trip to the store to get more stripping chemicals. On the second trip I found aerosol stripper. Ozone be damned, this stuff's cool! No brush needed to apply it. Which is good cuz I didnt follow the package instructions of the brush-on kind which suggest using a natural bristle brush. I used the foam brushes that I already had to save money. They arent kidding when they say that stuff is caustic! I went through two brushes and finished just in time before the foam completely disintegrated in to a gloppy mushy mess. The entire job, including trips to the store (20 minutes each) and washing the stripper residue with yet another chemical, took approximately 8 hours. 

So after stripping, it was definitely time to rest. Here's what I woke up to on Sunday morning.

Looking better already! I have no idea what kind of wood this is but it's not pine and it's very hard. And very very heavy.
 

Sand as much as humanly possible. (Naturally, as we are humans, what is humanly possible will never be perfect. That's my excuse.) Wear a mask for this. Please. I beg you. I didnt wear one and Im still reeling from the ingestion of so much sawdust. You should probably wear a mask whilst stripping too. Anonymity is important for those of us with 'proper' day jobs.

Note: A mask would probably be one of those tools that no home should be without. Even before a caulking gun. One would think that with all the decorating and home improvement shows I watch I would have a whole collection of them by now. If only they came in designer styles and you could buy them at Claire's. You can bet then Id have them in every colour.

Step 4: Stain.

This is the easiest part. A little messy though. Since I lost my neoprene stripping gloves in the pile of newspapers, I needed new gloves to do the staining, so I broke into my stash of hair colouring boxes. Oh yeah. It's a wonderful thing that the more expensive hair colour packages come with nice latex gloves. But it's not so nice for my roots. Now I need latex gloves to colour my hair. I have to go to the hardware store in order to colour my hair!? In the long run being lazy really doesnt help anyone.

Nevertheless, I followed the instructions on the stain tin and off I went. Here's what I got for my labour. Not bad, eh? This only took about two hours, including the odd break.

Step 5: Make paper template.

I know it's already a huge improvement, but I am not done yet. I want to use my fancy Art Nouveau wrapping paper that I bought in Prague to decorate my end table. (You can really start to see how that $5.00 price tag was so misleading.) I only have enough paper to do the two sides, the top and the drawer front. Maybe the skirt at the bottom too if I dont make too many mistakes. 

To ensure that I make as few mistakes as possible (it's that human imperfection thing again) I made scrap paper templates of the areas I want to cover. I was unusually careful with this process. I knew that if I got the templates wrong there would be no hope for me in the next step.

I have a little experience with découpage. My experience tells me that this is going to be harder than it seems. There's always a problem with air bubbles and wrinkles and the lack of time that Mod Podge gives you to adjust your paper. Anyway, the basic idea is that you brush on the mod podge all over the area. (I watered it down very slightly.) Then you place the picture, paper, whatever, on it in exactly the right place the very first time with absolutely no wrinkles or bubbles. Uh huh. Okay. 

Now I'll explain how I do it. First I dunk my fingers into the pot of podge. Then I smear it on the area to be covered. Then I cross my fingers and place the paper on with the odd wrinkle and bubble in really noticeable places. With such a big sheet of paper and such a large area to be covered, I do this in sections. The podge dries a little too quickly to do it all at once. I smear on some podge at one end and then place the paper as close as I can to the top edge of the table. Then smooth it out a bit. Then I add more podge and let the paper fall into place over it and then a little more until Ive got the whole sheet of paper stuck down. 

As quickly as possible after getting the paper down I use my brayer. It's just a skinny roller thingy that smoothes out stuff. If youre a rubber stamping, crafty sort you already have one of these. I also have a plastic wallpaper scraper close at hand to smooth out air bubbles and creases before they dry. Yeah, fat chance. Like I said, Mod Podge dries too fast and humans are too imperfect. 

Notice the air bubbles?

WARNING: If you must use the wallpaper scraper keep in mind how strong wallpaper is and how flimsy wrapping paper is, especially when it's wet. Learn from my mistakes! Even the slightest bit of podge or dust or fleck of a molecule of an atom of dirt will result in torn paper. In my case, my paper lends itself quite well to patching. It's patchy paper. Lucky. Very lucky. (Did you even notice the patched bit of paper in the image under "Decoupage Materials"? I bet you didnt!)

So here's what the mostly finished product looks like.

Try to imagine it with hardware on the drawer. Ive also since brushed a bit of gold on the "buttons" of the skirting to make them blend in a bit more.

Top View

I finished the decoupage in about 2 painstaking hours. It's not perfect but it's going in my bedroom so only those who already like me get to go in there and see it. 

The colours of the paper, I decided, were a little too vibrant so I also rubbed on some of the walnut stain to antique the paper. I did it in the dark so it's kinda streaky but it just makes it look that much more aged. It's supposed to look dirty! And just to prove how much I believe that, for my next trick I will seal in the stains.

Step 7: Seal.

Paint on as many coats of sealer as you can manage. A cheap foam brush works fine for this. Dont shake or stir the tin. The "Polycrylic" and I think other varnishes just get bubbly when agitated and then they dont go on smoothly. Ive done two coats so far and it needs at least two more to get a smooth finish. I want the sealer to be thick enough that you cant feel the seams and edges of the paper. 

TIP: Here's something I learned while I was sealing. Normally a pin prick will fix small bubbles but it's not enough to fix long wrinkle-type bubbles. In order to alleviate some of the air pressure under those, I scored along the bubble with my scissors and then pressed the paper flat. It tends to look a bit like a scratch in the paper but it's better than a huge bubble. Besides, the paper already looks dirty from the stain, so what's a few scratches to add to the authenticity?

EVEN BETTER TIP: Dont do anything to the bubbles. After a few days when everything is dry the bubbles disappear. When the paper is wet it stretches causing bubbles, but as it dries it seizes up tight again and creates a lovely bubble free flat surface. There, now you can learn from my mistakes. 

(Okay, so I did bring back some furniture but this little beauty dont need no refinishing!)

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