DRESSER MAKEOVER - 1 coat paint technique || BUILDING A CUSTOM BASE with KREG JIG

well here we are again welcome to my channel if you're new if you've been here before welcome back this is an oak dresser probably from the 70s or 80s it's not in terrible shape but it is quite dated and needs a little tlc i'm actually going to be recreating a look i did on another similar piece a few months back i'm sure i'm not the first person to think of this technique but i haven't seen it around so i'm sharing it with you today this is going to be one stellar glow up stay tuned my name is angie and i refinish furniture sometimes i paint and sometimes i don't but i always do what i can disable pieces from the trash welcome to my workroom starting out here as i always do with cleaning out the dresser removing the hardware there was a lot of stuff inside this dresser old drawer liners some bits of ladies clothing some of it is going to go in the trash but there were a few things i saw that i will probably actually donate to a women's shelter because somebody may be able to use it i also found this little jewelry pouch no jewelry in it sadly i do hear stories of people finding treasures in these things pretty much all i find are underwear and socks and old screws and bobby pins bobby pins for days i don't know why even though i'm going to be attempting to modernize in a way this dresser i am going to be keeping this hardware i don't hate it i don't love it either but it's an odd size it would be very difficult to find hardware to fit without drilling new holes and i honestly don't mind the vintage look i just want to update it a little bit i'm giving the outside of this cabinet everywhere i'm going to be painting a really good cleaning with tsp tsp is a fantastic cleaner and degreaser it cuts through pretty much everything and the paint technique i'm doing without giving too much away too soon it's a bit transparent and because of this i can't scuff sand as far down into the wood as i normally would when painting i need the wood grain to be able to show through a bit so i'm upping to give it a really really good clean so that my paint will adhere properly even though i'm not sanding it first i also gave the inside of the dresser a little wipe there was a lot of what looked like falcon powder which is pretty common in older pieces i'm going to be stripping the top with my favorite stripper here this is circa 1850 and this is my stripping brush you can see it's very hard a few seconds submerged in the stripper and it becomes soft and pliable again almost like a new brush so i can get several uses out of one cheap chip brush a little trick or tip i guess when you're stripping the top and you're finding that one half is drying out before you get to it you can actually smoosh around the stuff that you just stripped let it sit for a second and then go back and finish and it works great i often get asked why i choose stripper or scraping sometimes as opposed to just sanding generally if a piece is veneer and the finish is quite thick or hard and intact i will strip or scrape before sanding just to sort of preserve the veneer this top is veneer a lot of this piece is solid oak but the top is veneer so i'm choosing to strip it before i go ahead and sand it another thing you can do is apply a little bit of stripper to a fine steel wool and it will often help get off any residue this top is technically already stripped enough for me to sand i just wanted to show you that that's something that you could do i'm starting things off with a 150 grit sand pad once i go over the whole top i'll go back through with a 220 for my final sanding [Music] true story here oak is actually not my favorite wood not even my second or third favorite i'm not really a big fan of oak but at the same time i just there's i don't know why but i just love a wood top on a piece if the top can be spared i like to spare it [Music] i'm using minwax gel stain in the color aged oak for this top because my paint color is going to be a little bit darker i wanted to keep the top a bit lighter just to have a little bit of contrast i actually really like the color aged oak it's warm but not too dark not too light it's just kind of a nice medium tone i find [Music] at this exact moment in the process i was considering going just a tad darker but i opted to wait and see what this top look like with the paint it is very similar in warmth to the original color it's just a bit lighter i need to address some of these chips this one is interesting because you've got the top layer of the oak veneer then there's this middle sort of substrate layer and then the base layer which is the solid wood frame so i'm just using a light oak colored wood filler i'm going to let that set up and then i'll sand it smooth seal it and then i can paint right over it [Music] okay so there are certain colors in the fusion mineral paint line that are semi-transparent and it's very apparent when you're putting on your first coat it just it doesn't seem like the coverage is there you always get great coverage on the second coat but that first coat is a little bit see-through and i'm capitalizing on that today this is a technique that i discovered sort of by accident and i say i discovered it i like i said i don't know if i'm the only person to ever do this but i've never seen it done before i'm using coal black renfrew blue which is a beautiful teal color and i'm using initially here three parts of the renfrew and then i went and added one more part so four parts of the red fruit blue [Music] two parts of the coal block these little silicone circles are great for getting off stuck lids just so you know [Music] so i added my two parts of cold black and then i realized it was only a little bit of renfrew blue left in the jar so i went ahead and just dumped the rest of it in even though i couldn't see the lines on the outside i could tell by looking into it that it pretty much went up to that top line so i technically added an extra two parts of the run through blue so my final recipe for this color ended up being six parts run through blue and two parts coal black anytime i mix a new color i write the recipe on the lid because you never know when you need to make more of it and when you want to change it out you can just use acetone to take that marker off the key i discovered with making this technique work well is a very soft brush so i'm using a brand new zipper palm pro brush the bristles are super soft and it's exactly what i want in a nutshell i'm applying one coat of this paint and that's it the goal of this is to add a little bit of color but i also want that wood grain to show through underneath and like i said i've did this before in another piece sort of by accident absolutely loved how it looked and when i started my youtube channel i said i'm gonna recreate this for you guys and that's what i'm doing here this is very much one of those trust the process techniques it's gonna look worse before it looks better the end result is really cool i realize it won't be everyone's cup of tea but it's absolutely beautiful i think but it's gonna go through some ugly stages first where you're gonna sort of be questioning what you're actually doing here you want this to look intentional you don't want to slap the paint on in 50 different directions try to make sure that your paintbrush is running along the wood grain you can apply it in different directions but before it hardens up take that brush smooth it out in the direction of the wood grain now this technique isn't going to be possible with every color of fusion some of them are very opaque but there are a few like like i said cold black red pro blue i do believe cranberry is another color that's a little bit transparent and i'm sure there are more um you can experiment but in terms of the project piece itself pieces made of woods like oak and elm something with a strong wood grain is really going to shine with this technique lighter woods like pine and poplar probably won't work as well because essentially what we're doing here is a glaze [Music] [Music] before i can paint over these little patched areas i'm using just a clear coat and a spray to seal it let that dry and then i can paint right over it you can see a tiny bit of that color showing through all i'm doing is adding just a little bit of extra paint there to camouflage it this is a great shot of the difference between this color combination when it's dry versus wet so obviously what i'm painting is the wet and on the right is the color dry and i'm actually going to show you in a few minutes with a heat gun how dramatic the difference is i didn't dry this whole piece with the heat gun i'm just doing it here to show you that patience is key this looks better as it dries i'm giving these thirsty drawers a little drink here with wise owl furniture self this is the scent lemon verbena which is my absolute favorite scent of theirs it smells so nice it nourishes the wood gives it a nice lovely color again and once my paint has dried i'm sealing it with fusion beeswax hemp oil combo also using a wax brush i have two different wax brushes one is for the scented products this is for the unscented and you basically just apply it over the whole piece wipe away the excess and it dries to a nice luster [Music] for the top i'm going to be sealing it with three coats of minwax poly acrylic making sure i leave a few hours in between [Music] this is how i apply the polycrylic i just sort of get it on there in whatever direction i need to and before it starts to set up at all i'm gonna make slow even passes the whole length this smooths out any lines any bubbles i'm barely using any pressure people ask me all the time how i avoid bubbles in my finish i'm basically just dragging this along i'm not putting any downward pressure on this if i were to start pushing down it would create bubbles in the finish always check your drawers for numbers or letters this tells you where the drawers actually go because a lot of the slots are made for specific drawers i'm using a stiff nylon brush and some tsp and water to scrub this harder off really well initially as you can see here i just put them on as is but i went back a little bit later on and added a little bit of gold glazing just to add a little bit more contrast now at this point i thought i was done but when i stepped back and looked it was just missing something so here i am now i've seen many people do it on youtube i've never done it i'm building a custom oak base for this it just seemed a little bit too low to the ground a little bit too dated for lack of a better term even with the new paint job and the new top so i'm giving this vintage beauty some legs to lift it up off the floor and just give it a bit of a more modern vibe i hate math math is not my strong point but there is a little bit of math involved here so my length is 65 and 5 8 so i need two boards that length and the depth of the piece is eighteen and three quarters however i'm going to leave a little bit off of that i'm going to take about a quarter of an inch off each of those measurements just in case the dresser itself isn't perfectly square i don't want parts of this sticking out just gives me a little bit of wiggle room so i need two of each of these [Music] but i'm not done the legs i'm using are an inch and a half thick i have two legs on each end that's a total of three inches i need to subtract from both of those measurements i want this to be approximately the same height as the old antique sideboards and buffets because i can picture this in someone's dining room or as a media stand so i'm adding seven inch legs this will give me a total height of 37 inches but first i'm going to measure and cut the front and back piece and the left and right sides [Music] make sure whether using a circular saw like this or a table saw that you cut on the side past your measurement line if you cut directly on the line or slightly ahead of the line your measurements are going to be off so i'm measuring cutting the side pieces now with the piece that was left over after i cut the long board i had to purchase two eight foot pieces of oak for this and a three foot piece for the legs this was around 150 canadian so definitely not cheap i'm measuring out 14 and 1 8. the eighth is width of my saw blade i want two seven inch legs but instead of just going ahead and cutting all four seven inch legs there needs to be a little bit of safety i need to be able to hold on to something while i'm making my angled cuts which you'll see in a moment i also have to adjust the base of my saw to make sure that the depth is going to cut through this piece because it is an inch and a half thick it's always a good idea to pop the battery off while you're doing adjustments like this [Music] i need to make sure that at the top of my angled cut there is a section wide enough for the main boards to fit just like this and let me tell you this was a pain in the you-know-what trying to cut sideways with a circular saw through oak is no fun i ended up having to finish it off with a jigsaw someday i'll have a table saw but for now i have to use what i have this took way longer than it should have but i've got my four legs two are angled the back ones are just straight about my side pieces i've got my front and back pieces i'm just gonna peel off the labels and then give everything a 220 grit sanding just to make sure everything's smooth and one thing i like to do is actually sand off the edges a little bit this keeps them or helps keep them from splitting and splintering down the road and i do the same thing at the bottom of the feet [Music] i'm going to be using my kreg jig for making the pocket holes and fine thread hardwood kreg jig screws to assemble this piece the screws that come with it are generally the coarse thread you don't really want that in hardwood fine for something like pine but for hardwood you definitely want the finer threads these little jigs are great basically you set this to whatever the depth is of the board that you're cutting into these boards are three quarters of an inch thick so that's the setting i'm using and on the drill bit itself you also have those same three measurements so make sure that your stop is set at the same and what it does is it just keeps that from going all the way through the board because you definitely don't want that and this is just a good view of what actually happens in the board you want to clamp this to the wood but you want to avoid these two open holes this is where all of the debris from the screw bit is going to come out so you don't want to block that [Music] and there's your two perfect pocket holes i'm gonna be adding three sets of pocket holes on the long boards and two along the side these ones will be what i screw into to attach the base to the main part of the dresser these holes on the sides are what is going to attach to the legs i apologize if this all sounds super confusing it's a little bit hard to explain considering this is the very first time i have done this now some of you might be wondering why you can't just use a normal drill bit to sort of fake the pocket holes instead of using this kreg jig and the main reason is this little extra bit on top this is going to partially drill a pilot hole for your screw and will help prevent the wood from splitting at the end of the pocket hole if that makes sense [Music] oh my gosh finally finally time to assemble this make sure to check the direction of your pocket holes i actually accidentally had one of my pieces upside down initially i had to remove it and flip it right side up before finishing the assembly i'm going to stain the base with the same aged oak what is interesting here is that the one and a half inch square pieces that i used for the legs is actually red oak and i do believe that the long boards are white oak so they have slightly different tones i wasn't exactly prepared for that it's not the biggest deal and it was all that home depot had so you know sometimes you just have to roll with it [Music] now my base seemed pretty strong but i still had two pieces left over from the long boards and they were almost exactly the right length to add two cross braces in the middle of the base these two little chunks are all i have left of those two eight foot pieces i used pretty much all of it [Music] these two cross braces will just add a little bit of extra stability i had the pieces so i thought why not this is a big beefy dresser so i can use all the stabilization i can get [Music] kudos to those of you still with me i know this one's a little bit longer than most of my videos but there was a lot to it this piece took about 18 hours to complete and of course as usual willow had to come in and say hello she loves her snuggles right now well this piece took a bit longer than i thought it was initially going to i thought it was going to be a quick easy thing it wasn't i ended up building a custom base but i think this piece is better for it it wasn't anything terribly wrong with it but the glow up is i think phenomenal have a look [Music] [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Transcend Furniture Gallery

Views: 569,720

Keywords: furniture, furniture flipping, painted furniture, furniture painting, diy, diy furniture, repurposed, refinished furniture

Id: n3nEtWUwgv4

Length: 23min 11sec (1391 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 30 2021