Project 24: Refinishing the Dresser and Night Stand (part 1)

You may remember from this post that we bought a dresser and night stand from good will to be refinished and used in our nursery. This past weekend I was finally able to start working on this project. There are 9-11 steps in this process (depends on if it needs 2 or 3 coats of paint). I'll be painting these items white, not stripping them down and refinishing the wood. I may try that in a future project, but for now, these steps are only for people who want to repaint their furniture  I've completed steps 1-3.

But before we get to the steps, let's take a look again at what we bought:

I love the potential these have, even though I'm not crazy about the bamboo theme. But it's nothing I can't fix! Now lets get to the steps!

Step 1: Disassemble & Wash the furniture

By disassemble, I mean remove the hardware, take out the drawers, remove any doors, etc. I learned my lesson with the living room desk and I'll be refinishing the drawers at the same time I am working on the main piece. Here's my hardware. I don't plan on reusing these drawer pulls but I never throw them out until the new ones are in place. They can come in handy (like carrying one to the store to make sure the new pull is the same size) plus there's always the possibility of just spray painting these for temporary use if I can't find anything new right away and I don't want to be rushed.

Here are the disassembled furniture pieces:

After everything was taken apart and laid out, I got out my wood soap and bucket. You're going to want to give everything a good wash. This may seem silly, since you're just going to be making a mess when you sand it, but it's still necessary. If you have gunk on your furniture you don't want to start smearing it around when you are sanding. Plus it just makes the sanding process a lot easier. If you start with a clean surface, later it's easy to tell what parts of the furniture have been sanded.

Step 2: Sand Everything with Medium Sandpaper

In this step you're going to sand off any finish the furniture may already have on it. This will also create a better surface for the primer to stick to. To get the job done, I used these tools:

a. Mask - so I didn't breath in the sawdust

b. Safety Glasses - so I didn't get sawdust in my eyes

c. Quick-load Sander

d. Medium grade Sand Paper

e. Medium grade Sanding Block

The quick-load sander holds 1/3 of a sheet of the sand paper. You just cut out what you need and attach it to the sander.

Then you start sanding in a circular motion:

Here is a good picture of the difference between the sanded and unsanded area of the dresser:

Use the sanding block for the tricky parts:

You don't need to sand it down to the wood, just remove the finish. Honestly, the best way to know if you've take off enough is just to feel it with your bare hands. It will feel a lot less smooth and you can tell that the finish is missing. Here's what everything looks like when it's been sanded down. It is kind of hard t tell in the pictures, but everything is covered with dust.

 

 

Before you're done with this step you need to get rid of all that dust. I got out my shop vac and just vacuumed it all up. It didn't work perfectly, but it was easy to run a damp rag over everything afterwards to pick up any dust left over. 

Step 3: Prime it

I used the same KILZ primer I've been using on the wood paneling inside.

My supplies consisted of the primer, stir stick, tray, roller and two cheap brushes. The brushes are super cheap because primer is REALLY hard to clean off (at least the oil based stuff is). Rather than buy turpentine to clean my brushes I just buy cheap brushes and throw them out when I'm done. Same with the tray. I know it's not the most economical way to go, but I don't want to mess with more chemicals if I don't have to. Plus this saves me time.

Anyways, I just started rolling that primer over everything, using the brushes for the non-flat areas:

The sanding gave the furniture an uneven surface and you can really tell this when you look at the primer. See how it's got a texture to it? This is caused by both the uneven surface and the type of paint roller I'm using. I wanted one that would put it on fairly thick.

It took a little while, but I got everything primed!

So that's where 'm at right now. 3 steps down, 6-8 to go. Some of  you may be wondering why the process is so long. You may have heard of a lot simpler ways of doing this. My answer is I am trying to do a professional grade job. When finished, I want this piece to look like we bought it white, not like I repainted it. That means there is a lot of sanding/repainting involved, but I'm convinced it will be worth it.

For now, our garage looks like this:

Someday we'll be able to park our cars in it!

This project is continued here and concluded here.