Don’t Paint Me!

Do you have an old cabinet or dresser that was painted? What did you think when you first saw it? Did you think it was made out of scrap pieces? Did you ever wonder what the wood looked like underneath, or did you say “I’ll just repaint it”? One of my current projects is refinishing my wife’s dresser. It is a 1940s Art Deco, Waterfall four drawer dresser. When she inherited it from her grandmother, it had already been painted a gaudy pink. Some people might call this color “titty pink”. Here is a nice little picture of it. Well, the top drawer anyways.

Look at that grain pattern! How could anyone hide such a beautiful design underneath that hideous paint? I have been using a cabinet scraper and a decent putty knife to scrape off the paint, without marring the wood. This drawer front has a walnut veneer with mahogany trim. I absolutely love the diamond shaped pattern of the walnut! I could have used a chemical stripper, but I don’t want to risk damaging the wood…or my lungs. I just can’t stand the smell of that stuff.

Once I removed all of the paint, I wiped it down thoroughly, with a lint-free cloth. After this, I began the assessment phase of the project. My first step is to determine what kind of condition the finish is in and what type is it. Well, it appears to be oiled and a thin laquer sealer. The laquer was pretty much taken off with the paint when I scraped off the paint. So, I just sanded this puppy down.

Before I sanded the drawer, I assessed any repairs that needed to be made. Lucky for me, all I had to do was re-glue a couple of the joints. They were pretty lose. After the glue had dried, next came the sanding portion.

I started off with a 320-grit sanding pad. Let me just note that it was all sanded by hand. No power sanders were used! After using the 320-grit pad, I used #0000 fine steel wool over the entire drawer. Next, I wiped it down (twice) with a lint-free cloth. Make sure that you ALWAYS wipe down the piece after sanding, even if you are just going to a finer grit. Once I finished with the steel wool, I sanded the face of the drawer with an extra fine sanding pad (the equivalent of 1200 grit sandpaper). Here it is.

Look at that shine! Now isn’t that just beautiful? Well, I’m not done yet!

The next step is to finish it. The wood seemed to be pretty dry. So, I applied two coats of tung oil. Allowing at least a day for the oil to soak into the wood, then wiping of the excess. After several days of letting the oil do it’s thing, I applied three coats of a wipe-on polyurethane finish. I prefer to use a paper towel for this. No special reason behind this, it’s just my preference. I’m weird like that.

Don’t forget to sand and wipe down the piece in between each coat! Yes, I’ve made that mistake before. Here is the final piece!

Well, okay, it’s only the right half of the whole drawer. But still, that looks pretty damn gorgeous to me. I love the brass fittings at the ends of the drawer pull! Like I said at the beginning of this post, how could you paint over something this beautiful?

I hope you enjoyed this post and learned something new. Have a great day!