Helping My Desk Chair Grow Up a Little

Confession: When I posted pictures of my desk last month, I was kind of embarrassed about the blue and green desk chair. The patterns in the fabric and on my desk competed with each other, the blue didn’t connect with anything like I expected it would, and the whole ensemble looked childish. I knew I needed a change.

Let me refresh your memory. Here's what the chair looked like when I first showed you my desk:

And here's what it looks like no that I've helped it grow up a little:

I'm Sorry, You're Gonna Have to Find Somewhere Else to Sit

Remember this pretty little chair that I pictured last week with my desk?

Well, now look at her:

Excuse the smart phone-quality photo above. 

She was pretty by herself (yes, it's a she) and might have looked better in another room, but I thought she 1) didn't connect well enough with my room in her deep turquoise state and 2) looked childish next to a borderline, could-go-both-ways desk that some people thought would look nice in a little girl's room. It would, but that's not exactly the look I'm going for at nearly 25. I'm all for feminine, but I want it to be sophisticated too. So in an effort to make this chair grow up a bit, I plan to refinish it. Not paint it, but actually sand and stain it. And that required me to strip all the paint off.

My first attempt, with the chair fully assembled, was mildly successful. Still, I had a really hard time getting in all the crevices to remove paint. After all, if I'm going to go to this much trouble to refinish a chair, I'm going to do it right. I also think there is part of me that knows my grandpa, who did an amazing job refinishing antique furniture all the time, would do a nearly perfect job, and there's some romance and nostalgia in trying to emulate his old-school, high-quality craftsmanship.

After doing quite a bit of googling, I found one website that gave instructions on how to disassemble a chair. Duh! Why didn't I think of that before? It's the same strategy I used when I refinished my coffee table last fall. So I bought a $5 rubber mallet from Home Depot and used it to knock all the pieces out of their joints.

And boy oh boy did that make my life easier. I know that this "chair" is going to be so much easier to sand in pieces too, which is important because I need to do a very thorough job. Tonight I'm going to make one more attempt at stripping some stubborn residue off the pieces, wash it down with mineral spirits, and start sanding. Oh yes, I'm also going to write a blog post so you can see our new, pretty TV stand. Fingers crossed that I don't stay up till 2 am doing it!

Update: I just linked up to Shine Your Light's "Before" edition of her February's Before and After link party. So I have to finish this by the end of the month! Although I'm hoping it will be sooner :)

It's a Coffee Table Post...about My Coffee Table

Last year I bought a coffee table on Craigslist from a family with four kids, and boy did they leave a mark on it. Literally. It was totally beat up. But it was also only $20 and solid wood for the most part, so I scooped it up with the intention of refinishing it.

A word to the wise: Don’t buy a piece of furniture in October that you intend to refinish unless you are willing to live with it as-is until the spring…or however long it takes you to get around to finishing the project. We lived with our beat up coffee table for a year until I decided on a whim to try to finish it before my cousins came to visit.

So one day when I came home from work, the table looked like this:

And when I was done working for the night, it looked like this:

And I looked like this:

Caution: Don't try to live on the edge like me and wear flip flops while sanding.
Always wear closed-toe shoes when using power tools. 

It was a dusty endeavor.

When it comes to refinishing furniture, this ain't my first rodeo. A while ago I refinished my big girl bed, and I also stained a piece of wood to make a coatrack. To tackle this project, I took it into our backyard and went after it with my power sander (I own this Ryobi sander, but this similar Black and Decker sander would work fine too). The finish came off super easily, and I was able to sand through a lot of the scratches and dents in the surface.  I started with the tabletop and then moved to the legs. That’s when I realized that I would be better able to sand and stain the entire table more thoroughly if I took the table apart.

A lot of tables can be easily de-constructed by removing screws on the underside of the tabletop. After removing the legs from the tabletop and shelf, I finished sanding the tabletop portion and legs and called it a night. I left the drawer and the shelf for another day.

While most of the table is solid wood, the shelf is made of a very thin veneer. That means I couldn’t just take a power sander to it. To make sure I thoroughly removed the finish without hurting the shelf, I decided to strip the finish off and then lightly sand it with sandpaper.

But, I was doing all this in the fall, so by the time I got home from work it was dark and kind of chilly—not good when you’re trying to strip a piece of furniture. Luckily, because I took the table apart, I could use a water-based stain to begin staining the tabletop and legs in our basement each night when I got home from work.

To stain the table, I used General Finishes Water-Basedstain in Espresso, which I had leftover from a previous project. I applied the stain evenly in sections using a foam brush, and wiped it off using pieces of an old t-shirt. I think I applied four coats in all.

When the next Saturday rolled around I set up shop outside and used a disposable paintbrush to apply Citristrip to the shelf. I let it sit on the surface for about 4 minutes, and then used a plastic stripping tool. I didn’t let it sit longer because it started to dry after that point.

In order to prevent myself from damaging the veneer, I was very careful with the stripping tool, allowing it to skim the surface and remove the finish without scraping the wood.

After stripping off the finish and cleaning off the stripper residue (snort), I let the shelf dry overnight inside.  Then I stained it using the same technique as the tabletop and legs.

After all the surfaces were stained, I used a foam brush to apply three coats of a MinWax Polycrylic Protective Finish in Satin. I let it dry over night, moved table back up to our living room in pieces, and put it back together.

I picked up some drawer pulls at Home Depot thinking that they were standard and would fit the coffee table drawer. Silly me. It turns out that a lot of standard drawer pulls are 3” wide, but the holes in my drawer were 4” apart. I found some drawer pulls on anthropologie’s website (similar ones currently available) that were the right width, ordered them in 4 colors, decided on the ones I liked best, and returned the rest. 

The table is admittedly a little large for the space, and the finish is a bit darker than I'd like -- it looks almost black in certain light, but I still think it's a major improvement over its previous beat up state. And, I'll be able to sell it for more on Craigslist when I eventually decide to move or find another piece for the space.

I’ll be back later this week with more overdue projects!

Linked to: My Uncommon Slice of Suburbia

A Place to Hang Your Hat (or Coat) Up

We really lucked out getting a townhouse with as much space as we have for the price we pay. But the problem with having a lot of space is…well…it’s kind of an invitation to fill it. And no one can fill up extra space like four girls. So while we have a spacious coat closet right in our entry way, we found pretty quickly that there was no room for guests’ coats and some of our coats in the closet. So rather than continuing to pile up coats on the chaise lounge my roommate got out of her parents’ basement, I decided to make a cheap/simple/stylish fix.

The solution: a coat rack in the form of a rack of hooks that can hang on the wall. I came to this solution for a few reasons. First, we wanted something wall mounted, and we needed one that was 40”+ long. Those are hard to find and can be pretty expensive. Second, I didn’t want to put a ton of holes in the wall right there because we are renters and it’s always good to minimize the number of holes we have in a wall when possible. Third, I wanted to be able to customize the coat rack so that it was non-ugly, and so that I could hang it on studs rather than having to use wall anchors. And oh yeah, there was also the entertainment/fun value of me taking on another project.

I could've gone for ordinary hooks in this project, but I have a slight obsession with hardware. As in I have been known to go on trips and snap photos of cool doorknobs.

One of my many hardware pics. This one is a beautiful doorknob I saw on a house in San Juan, which is full of awesome hardware.

World Market has really cool anthropologie-esque hardware that I’ve always wanted to use in a project, so I went over there and snagged 8 hooks and knobs for about $27. I got three hooks (two the same color) for $1.99 each, a set of two glass flower knobs for $4.99, a cool blue knob for $3.99, and two pretty cool ceramic painted knobs for $5.99 each (they were a splurge, so they were just so cool!)

Once I bought the knobs, I took them home and laid them out on our floor. To give coats enough space to hang, I decided to hang the knobs about 6 inches from the center of each one. This made the space from knob 1 to knob 8 42 inches (because you multiply 6 inches by the number of spaces between knobs, which is 7, not eight). I then added 3 inches on either side of the knob and determined that I needed a board 48 inches long. I measured this length out on the wall I planned to hang it on, and it worked well for the space.

Because some of the knobs had screws built into them (as opposed to just running through them so you could remove it and use a shorter screw), the board had to be deeper than the screw itself in order for the board to lay flush with the wall. I measured the screws and determined I needed something at least 1 ½ inches deep. I went on an adventure to Home Depot and found a 2x4 stud, which is about 1 ½ inches deep, and had it cut to 48 inches. I used a medium grade 2x4 because I was worried that the nicer wood was too dense and therefore heavy to hang on the wall. Plus the medium grade was cheaper and it’s not like we’re attempting to furnish the White House here.

I measured the holes out on the front of the board and drilled holes large enough for each screw to slip through. That wasn't too tough. 

This is the part of my story where I tell you that a $15 drill from Target that you may have hanging out in your toolbox from college is not powerful enough to bore large holes in a piece of wood. Because I needed to wood to be flush with the wall but I also needed to secure the screws to the wood, I had to drill holes 1” in diameter into the back of the piece of wood. I went to Home Depot and got this drill bit that it supposed to do the trick, and would’ve, except that my drill wasn’t quite powerful enough. So I ended up starting with the drill bit, drilling a few random holes in the circle created by the drill bit, locking the drill and manually twist the drill bit in order to create the hole big enough for each screw to connect through with enough of the screw sticking out for me to attach a nut to it. I definitely recommend investing in a better drill for this, since my process took forever. After that battle, the rest of the process was pretty easy.

Since a stud is meant to be inside a wall and not hanging on it, the wood was pretty rough and had a few stamps on it. To prep the wood, I sanded it with 120 grit paper, followed by 220 grit. This gave me an opportunity to smooth the wood and off some of the stamps that were on the wood.

Once I finished my sanding and removed the dust with a damp cloth, I applied a General Finishes water-based espresso stain, which I had leftover from another project. I used a foam brush to apply the stain because I find that it goes on a little more evenly. I let the stain sit for a minute or two and then buffed the excess off with a piece of an old t-shirt (from my pile o’ t-shirts-they-handed-out-like-candy-in-college that I don’t wear anymore).

The great thing about water-based stain is that you can pretty easily apply it indoors. I started this project on a nice day outside, but brought it inside when I ran out of time to add another coat before it got dark. I set up my $19 pair of sawhorses and the drop cloth that my nurse roommate brought home from the hospital, and added the second coat in our basement/beer pong room. After I applied two coats and let them dry overnight, I covered the entire piece of wood with three coats of MinWax Polycrylic Protective Finish in Satin. I really wanted a matte finish, but Polycrylic is also water-based and can therefore be applied inside, so I made the sacrifice. I also don’t expect this thing to take a beating; otherwise I would’ve used a more durable oil-based finish.

After I let the protective finish dry overnight, I attached the knobs using a combo of a wrench and need-nose pliers to tighten each nut onto each screw. After securing the knobs and hooks, I used my handy dandy stud-finder (no, I haven’t used it to find a studly man friend, and yes, that’s a super cheesy joke) to find where the wall studs were closest to the end of the boards but within the 48” piece of wood (hehehe…get your mind out of the gutter). That way I could attach the wall-mounting hardware to my new coat rack so that I could screw the hardware into the studs, making the piece of wood hung sturdily (this just keeps getting worse) to the wall, and also preventing me from having to use wall anchors, which create holes that would be a major bi-otch to patch when we move out of our rental.

The hardware I used was the type that has one piece that you screw onto the thing your hanging, which you then slip down over the screw you’ve anchored into the wall. I know that is an incredibly confusing description, so just check out the picture below. Make sure that when you use this you hang it with the hole that the screw can fit on the bottom, otherwise the screw won't attach to the hardware.

Now we have a place to hang our coats and a pretty decoration right inside the doorway, which apparently doesn't get fabulous light as it appears in this picture.

This entire project only cost about $39, and a rack this size (ha!) would’ve probably cost a lot more than that in a store, if I could even find one I like. Here’s a list of materials I used: 

• Knobs/hooks from World Market -- $27
• 2 x 4” wood stud -- $3 (and I still have about 40” left over)
• General Finishes Water Based Espresso Stain – had already, but you can find a small can of water-based stain at Home Depot for under $10, and have plenty left to tackle another project
• MinWax Polycrylic Protective Finish (Satin) -- $8
• Mounting Hardware – about $1 (can’t remember exactly)

Total for this project: $39

Next time you're looking for a quick storage solution, consider this one. It could easily be done in an apartment as long as you're cool with sanding in the bathtub and staining in your living room. Who are we kidding? In the spirit of this innuendo-filled post, you've probably done weirder things there before anyway.

Sarah's Big Girl Grownup Bed

I was ready for a fresh furniture start when I finally moved out of my parents’ house after living at home for a year after college. When I originally moved back into my parents’ place, I replaced my childhood twin bed with the full big girl bed that I purchased in college. I knew my headboard from college would look too small in my new (master!) bedroom, and I wanted something a little more grownup this time around. Rather than do the all-white furniture thing again, I was looking for a dark wood piece to contrast with my light blue and white bedding, and mix with some white vintage pieces. I absolutely love the combination of light blues and whites with dark wood, like the elements in these inspiration rooms:

Pottery Barn bed and linens

Jordan & Landon's kitchen/dining room from a Young House Love house crashing

 I took to my reliable source, Craigslist, searching for a “new” bed. My original specs:

• Full bed (reusing the mattress I had in college)
• Budget: $60
• Solid wood
• Preferably dark wood (but willing to refinish)
• No footboard (or low footboard)
• On the larger side

Unlike a retail store, Craigslist sellers aren’t concerned with covering overhead and they aren’t trying to turn a profit in a production to sales sense. This means that things like time, space, and convenience govern the price of an item in addition to its physical condition and subsequent value. I’ve found that when people are trying to get rid of stuff, they sell it at pretty amazing prices, so I wasn’t concerned with my budget.

Although I had a limited budget, I still wanted a solid piece of furniture. When searching for furniture I look for solid construction, including solid wood (or solid wood with a veneer) and solid joints. This way I know that the furniture will hold up to moves, refinishing, and that it will actually be worth something if I decide to sell it later.  Also, call me a furniture snob, but I like living in a space that I know has high quality items (at a good price of course). Because I prefer to pick up solid furniture on the cheap, I look for used stuff on Craigslist rather than going to Target or Ikea right away, keeping the particleboard to a minimum and saving money since real wood is often hundreds of dollars, even at Ikea.

In addition to the tight budget, you probably noticed that I had specific footboard requirements. I feel that big footboards, especially solid ones, break up the space in the room. I think that my 6’3” bf appreciates this decision as well (he has a hard enough time with the full bed).  

I searched for a few weeks for a bed that I loved. Finally, I came across a full sleigh bed with a low footboard and large sweeping headboard that I had to have. Only problem? It was way above my budget: $150. I found myself caught somewhere between loving the piece and hating the price. That place must’ve been closer to loving the piece because I did email the owner right away (a must if you actually want to purchase a prized piece), but didn’t hear from the owner for the rest of the afternoon. As I went to bed I found myself really hoping that I would lay my head on the Craigslist bed in my new place.  It was actually a great price for a bed, even if my original price standards were, well, lower. I also really loved the sophisticated lines of the bed, which were still curvy and feminine without being too girly.

The next morning I had an email from the owner saying the bed was mine, so I pulled my teenage bro/mover out of bed and went to pick it up. It was in great shape with the exception of a scratch or two, so we loaded it into the family minivan and toke it home.

I should probably mention at this point that the bed was actually Pottery Barn’s Valencia sleigh bed, which I have admired for years. My point of hesitation was that the bed was a discontinued honey oak color, and I was looking for dark mahogany-espresso. But looking for furniture on Craigslist is a lot like shopping for house; if you want a real gem for a good price, you have to look for potential. I had never stained anything before, but this didn’t look too complicated.  Annnnnnd $150 didn’t seem too bad when I found that my dream bed is still selling at Pottery Barn for over $1,000 with shipping (!!!!!!). 

 Pottery  Barn Valencia Bed -- the color I want (not the Honey Oak)

Nixing the Honey Oak

I decided to strip the wood since the finish was difficult to sand off and a needed to remove the finish as thoroughly as possible because I was working with a large flat surface that needed to be uniform. The can of finish/paint stripper said that I should let it sit on the surface for 10-20 minutes, but I found that it seemed to evaporate faster and by the time 10 minutes had past the finish didn’t come off very well. Instead, I let it sit for 2-5 minutes, and then scraped it off with the stripping tool and/or putty knife, depending on the spot. I wore thick latex gloves to do this (thicker than dishwashing gloves) to protect my skin from the corrosive stripper. I removed as much finish as possible, keeping in mind that I would give the thing a solid sanding when I finished the stripping process.

Here’s the bed mid stripping process:

After cleaning the wood with mineral spirits and steel wool , sanding it with my electric mouse sander (OK, my parents’ mouse sander), and sanding it by hand, I moved on to the staining process.

 

Headboard post-stripping process (pre-sanding)

Project Materials:

• Polyurethane (multipurpose) stripper (Home Depot)
• Plastic putty knife (Home Depot)
• Stripping knife/tool (Home Depot)
• Thick latex stripping gloves (Home Depot)
• Mineral spirits (Home Depot)
• Fine steel wool (Home Depot)
• Newspaper/drop cloth (Used newspaper/new drop cloth that my operating room nurse friend brought me from her hospital)

Staining

This was my first attempt at staining something, so it was definitely a learning experience. First, I had to pick out a color.  I went to a hardware store and picked up some color samples. After testing the samples on the back of the footboard, I decided I didn’t like either color. Realizing that I had been going about things all wrong, I took to the internet searching for colors/brands that were similar to the type of thing I was looking for. If you’re reading this blog, then you probably already know to do this type of thing, but in case you don’t, PLEASE take this piece of advice: you will rarely encounter an occasion when someone else hasn’t already attempted what you’re currently attempting (especially if you’re pulling from an inspiration space), so learn from the experience of other DIY-ers and do a little Googling before you attempt something. After doing some online research, I discovered that either General Finishes’ Java gel stain or Espresso water-based stain would give me deep, rich color I wanted. When searching for colors, keep in mind that stain takes differently to each wood, and colors vary based on the type of wood you’re working with, how many layers you put on, and the length of time that the stain sinks in.  

I tested both the Java and Espresso on the back of the footboard and decided to go with the Java because the Espresso had slightly grey undertones, and I was looking for more of a milk chocolate. After I decided on the finish, I sanded down the test areas (even though they wouldn't be visible).

The Java was a gel stain, which I applied with a rag. I read that some people didn’t like working with gel stain, but I thought it was actually kind of nice while working on a vertical surface. Unlike liquid stain, the gel sits on the surface more, so it takes a little longer to sink in. I let the stain sit on the wood for about 5 minutes, and then used a rag to buff off excess stain. This is a lengthy process and requires some elbow grease. The first coat looked a little splotchy, but the look evened out after a few more coats. I used three coats of stain, leaving some areas a little thicker than others to even out the color. 

 A slightly splotchy first coat

Once I finished the staining process, I used a foam brush to apply four coats of General Finishes Topcoat. I thought that this would be a bit of a stressful process. After all, I didn’t want to ruin my staining job with the topcoat. But I found that it was actually the easiest part. I used a foam brush and ran one long stroke from one side of the headboard to the other in order to create the smooth coat. Most of the brush strokes faded as the finish dried. After using the foam brush on the finish, I wished I had used it for the stain as well. All-in-all, I applied three coats of finish to the bed. 

Headboard, finished

Project materials:

• Old t-shirts to make lots of rags
• Drop cloths (Used newspaper/new drop cloth that my operating room nurse friend brought me from her hospital)
• General Finishes Java Gel stain (about ½ quart, purchased from local woodworking store)
• General Finishes Topcoat (a little bit more than the stain, purchased from local woodworking store)
• Many foam brushes (Home Depot)

The finished product doesn’t look exactly like its PB cousin, but it’s pretty close. For about $200 total, I’m quite content to lay my head in my new big girl grownup bed! For any of you that have been intimidated by the thought of staining furniture instead of painting it, I definitely encourage you to try it -- even if it's just a small table at first, it's a great skill to add to your furniture re-do repertoire.

 The finished product. Excuse the total lack of furnishings/too small nightstand in the background. I also need to get  a few more throw pillows.