How to Refinish A Wooden Buffet for Beginners

hey what's up everybody welcome back to the channel in this episode we are refinishing this old vintage buffet that i found at a local auction i paid about 150 in total for all the fees it's solid wood it's a beautiful piece i always wanted to refinish one of these so this is the full process video and i hope you enjoy it i typically don't spend this much on one piece but this thing was huge and i really wanted to do a makeover project mostly for you guys to watch but it was in really good condition there were a few things missing but we take care of everything throughout this video okay let's get started the first thing i always do is remove the old hardware i also remove the doors just so it would be easier to paint them after that i use a damp rag with some degreasing product and just wipe the entire piece clean the reason you want to clean it before you start sanding because if you sand the grease into your wood and you apply paint after your paint may not adhere as well and you really want your paint adhering as best as possible i'm removing this back piece so i can strip sand and stain it easier for later so i'll just take that off now now i'm just measuring the table top surface and the notch for the screw just to make sure i picked the right screw size the issue is that the top is actually loose because the screw must have fallen out so now i'm just applying some wood glue and adding new screws to keep the table top surface down and sturdy now i'm using clean strip 15-minute stripper on the top and the drawers and these are the places that we will be staining not painting you can just sand the old finish off solid wood which works fine but i just like using stripper because i find it's just a easier process less less hard work stripper is really easy to use you just take it pour a nice amount on and rub it on with a clean rag or you can use a brush but make sure you're using it in a well ventilated area and i use a respirator with my garage door open so it's it can be pretty strong sometimes and after waiting 15 minutes you'll start to see that it bubbles up i use a metal scraper and a lot of people say it could damage but if you just take your time i find it works better than a plastic one so you just simply scrape it back and forth and put it in a pile and throw it in a bucket when you're done scraping it off it's best to use some steel wool and mineral spirits worst thing is in this project i was low on mineral spirits you usually pour a bit more than this and then you just rub as much off it's usually a sticky residue you rub as much off as you can and then you can use a clean or dirty rag doesn't really matter to wipe all that up later with more mineral spirits but like i said i ran out of mineral spirits after all the stripping i'm using 60 grit to start usually i don't start this low but there is a dark film on top because of the dark stain that was used i guess before so i just want to do a quick pass with 60 grit to get as much of the darkness off and then i'll move on to a higher grit like a 180 or 220 to finish off which i do in this project so if you're unfamiliar with different sanders the first one i was using is called a random orbital sander which is one of my favorite it sands nicely to flat surfaces in larger surfaces really but you really want both detail mouth sander is the second one that i was using and that one really helps get those tight corners that you can't really get with the circular random orbital so here's a stain in the wood usually just from water or something causing damage and i just wanted to try this method out it probably wasn't necessary but i'm using bar keepers friend which has oxilic acid in it i believe and you just mix a bit of water and that together and it kind of gets thick over a couple minutes i'm just applying it over some water stains that this surface had and you just apply it then you wait until it dries and then you can scrape it off and when the water and everything completely dries usually the stain kind of disappears and it worked pretty good it doesn't look like it right away but when that water dries it definitely turned a lot lighter than the rest of the top which almost worried me but it wasn't an issue until we get to our water-based poly and you'll see that later on in the video anyways now i'm sanding everything with 180 and we're going to blend these stains in you can see how light it got just from waiting until it dries and we just sand everything down and it pretty much blends in pretty good [Music] even though i'm painting the sides and the rest we like to sand it down with 180 still just so the paint is super smooth when we apply it [Music] i'd say the most time-consuming part of this project was sanding these legs down which i just sand them down enough because we'll take care of the gel stain [Music] later [Music] finally after sanding everything i like to take a damp rag and just wipe up as much dust as i can and when that dries and more dust settles i just use a tack cloth and clean the rest up i'm going to tape the top and certain parts of the legs just so we don't get any paint on them i usually use a white primer but now since we're using black paint i'm trying rust-oleum's flat black primer just so if it scratches upper piece we can't really see anything behind it and we just apply this i'm using a primer because i find using an oil-based spray primer like rust-oleum's really helps your paint adhere better to the overall surface so now when i apply my black paint over the black primer the rust-oleum spray primer will help keep the paint on a lot better is it required not necessarily but do i recommend it one hundred percent okay after using the cheap spray cans i always use a 220 grit sanding sponge in between coats just because the spray cans can leave a bumpy feel so you want to sand that out before you start applying your paint i'm using the small wooster brush again and i'm using fusion mineral paint again i'm using whole black this time and we just take it dip it in the brush it's best that your brush is damp before you start applying it and then you can just glide it on nice and easy [Music] so after the first coat dries i apply a second coat but we don't need to watch the full process it's the exact same steps as the first coat now we can remove the tape and paper whatever we're using to protect the top like a paper airplane if you want and then we can get ready to stain the top and the legs and the drawers i'm using gel stain mainly because the legs i couldn't completely sand and i just had this sitting around so why not use it simply just take it take a clean rag and just rub the gel stain on all over the surface and then we'll come back and wipe it with a clean rag when we are finished don't forget to come back and wipe the excess stain because if you don't it'll just stay tacky for a long time and here's what it looks like after wiping it and it's still wet i didn't want to paint this middle piece black because i just thought it would look weird so i stained it as well i was a little worried that the gel stain wouldn't hide the sanding marks and the non-sanded parts on the legs but i was pretty happy with the results so when i sanded it with the gel stain and wiped it off you couldn't even tell that i didn't sand everything down completely which is the reason why i chose the gel stain in the first place here's just a little side by side of before and after applying the gel stain to the leg now after staining everything i'm using gilding wax on the hardware so we're just going to shine it up with some silver platinum gilling wax which is just going to bring this hardware back to life after waiting 24 hours for the gel stain to dry i come back with a tack cloth and just start with the paint and then i clean the inside of the drawers and i just give everything a quick wipe from the dust so we don't have any dust before we apply our poly i'm applying very thin diamond finish water-based polyurethane and i'm using it in my wagner flexio 590 so basically i just put in 10 water and a tiny bit of the black paint so we don't see any streaks in the polyurethane on the black paint and this also doesn't matter that you're applying a thin coat of black over the stain because it's dark stain anyways and you won't be able to see it and before you start spraying always do practice sprays trust me [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] so this is where the stains kind of scared me again later but all i did was take some more gel stain after the first coat of water-based poly and just rub in the gel stain to match the color of the stain and i used steel wool to rub everything smooth and after that i applied another coat of water-based poly and we did not see the stains coming through again so that worked out pretty good then overall i sprayed four coats of water-based poly for as much durability as possible after everything was dry i started attaching on the hinges again and i also installed some magnetic catches on the cabinet doors just because there was nothing behind them and anything that was there was broken from before so now they sit in nicely and snap in so let's take one last look at this vintage wooden buffet before we did anything look at the stains on top it was in it wasn't in the worst condition but it needed some some love that's for sure and here's what it looks like after i didn't have time to stage it all and everything so i'll take some nice photos later and throw them up on my instagram so don't forget to follow me over there but i'd like to know what you guys think of how this vintage buffet turned out and if there's anything you would have done differently feel free to let me know in the comments below i appreciate you guys watching this video and supporting my channel and don't forget to subscribe and i'll catch you in the next one

Channel: Furniture Flippa

Views: 70,754

Keywords: how to, how to refinish a wooden buffet, how to refinish a buffet, antique buffet makeover, antique buffet painted black, refinish antique buffet, vintage buffet makeover, coal black fusion mineral paint, gel stain, minwax, before and after, furniture flipping teacher, furniture flip, furniture makeover, how to refinish furniture, stripping furniture, painting furniture, painting furniture black, how to refurbish wooden furniture, kacha, christina muscari, katie scott salvage

Id: C1dNiIkndm8

Length: 15min 39sec (939 seconds)

Published: Mon May 03 2021