Tuesday, July 7, 2009

Sewing Cabinet Refinishing - FAIL

I was excited!  While I am so grateful and happy to have been given this sewing cabinet by my mom, it was pretty worn.  I've been reading how easy it is to refinish older furniture on several of my favorite blogs.  I was ready to try it.  I was confident!

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This is not the greatest photo since it was in the basement and I think I used the point and shoot here.  But I think you can get the general idea.

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Then I started.  First was the liquid sander/deglosser.  I applied it as instructed and well, I was doubtful if it did its job when all was said and done.  I didn't see much difference, but maybe it was barely detectable because most of the gloss was already worn off.  I applied a few coats and just assumed it must be ok.  So then came the spray paint.  I would have never thought to use spray paint myself, but others swore by it.  And I saw their successful results.  So I got some Rustoleum in Heirloom White.  Unfortunately this color did not come in a gloss.  So I bought another can of gloss spray paint.  My one can of spray paint quickly turned into 4!  It just looked like it was, well, spray painted and I wanted the paint to look even on the finish.  It never did.  In fact, in this photos maybe you can see what I'm talking about on the top of the cabinet.  I left several days for this to dry before applying the gloss spray.

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And so, this is what happened after it sat for a couple of minutes.

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I tried to scrape off as much of this mess as possible.  But now I need to get it all off.  So I need to by some paint stripper.  Or maybe I can use the spray gloss as a paint stripper!  Then I think I need to hand sand it and finally use a paint WITH gloss that I will apply with a BRUSH!

I am so in AWE of those blog friends who can do this and do it so easily.  This is obviously not a skill that I can boast about.  And now, this is the last thing on my mind to work on.  I just wanted to cry.  I know there is a lot of work ahead and a lot of money already wasted.

But I wanted to let you all know what happened with this, even if it was a failure.  Someday when I feel like getting back to it, I'll post my (hopeful) success!

1 ripples:

Sarah and Jack said...

Oy.

My top tips:
Always just use the sandpaper. (What is liquid sandpaper anyway? LOL)

With dark wood always use a primer (buy the expensive kilz or else the smell will "kilz" you).

If you *can* paint it with a brush, do. If it's a lumpy bumpy picture frame or a chandelier, use the spray can.

It can be saved, but you are right, it will be a lot more work!

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