DARK MAKEOVER for a trashed dresser- CURB FIND - refinishing furniture

I was contacted about this dresser from someone I sometimes hired to do deliveries for me this was a roadside find with all pieces that get picked up on the side of the road you never really know what you're getting into on the outside it looks like your typical somewhat neglected vintage dresser I'm not sure exactly what type of wood it was at first because it was a little bit hard to tell through the thick finish initially I was thinking doing something light with this but I don't know maybe I'm thinking dark there are definitely some issues here but this is going to be fun to work on 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 to save old pieces from the trash welcome to my work room just before I get into today's flip I want to talk about this one if you've seen this video from a few weeks back you know that this was in terrible shape and I did what I could to save this at the time of the release of the video I had different casters on it I used what I had at the time and I didn't have a shelf for the top yet this is what it looks like now I finally got these really cool Casters in which I think suit the size and shape of the piece much better than the big industrial ones and I had a piece of vintage glass cut what's kind of neat about the glass is it's a two-way mirror so it looks kind of dark and Smoky from the top but the underside actually looks more like a mirror I feel like this little piece is now living its best life and instead of selling it I'm opting to donate it to the rabbit rescue that I help out with sometimes and I think Millie agrees with my choices here what do you guys think [Music] but let's have a look at what I'm working on today [Music] thank you [Music] right off the bat I can see that a lot of the plastic Glides are missing from the underside of the drawers those are really easy to replace and I always have them on hand with all roadside finds the first thing I do is pull all the drawers out and have a really good look because you never really know why something was thrown out in the first place it could just be that someone has outgrown it or they bought new furniture and didn't really know what to do with this but sometimes there are reasons people throw Furniture away that are not so pleasant and nobody wants a creepy crawly surprise and this right here is why I almost never reach inside and just pull handfuls of crap out from the bottom of piece this was full of sewing needles that would not be fun thank you in my videos it's kind of a given that I clean the pieces beforehand but I don't always show it where this was picked up on the side of the road and I really don't know anything about it I wanted to make sure that this was super clean and so that's why I'm showing a bit more of the cleaning process than I normally do the entire outside of this is pretty grimy so I'm using a Zep heavy duty Degreaser this is probably my favorite degreasing cleaner I also like tsp but I like that the Zep is already mixed up [Music] thank you compared to some of the pieces I've done in the past that just reek of one thing or another this didn't smell terrible but it did have a slight Smoky smell which isn't terribly uncommon for vintage furniture but there are some things I'm going to do in this video to try to remedy that as I'm refinishing this [Music] the back was loose in spots and there were Nails driven into it and I just decided to pull it off I need to clean it really well anyway [Music] [Music] now normally with vintage especially mid-century-esque pieces I like to keep the original Harbor where I can even if I do modify it but I'm not loving this Hardware so this I will be removing I'll be keeping it and maybe using it on another piece at some point but for this piece I have something else in mind the two bottom drawers actually have solid wood handles and I'm really happy that they are screwed on sometimes depending on the construction of the piece the handles aren't removable and it makes refinishing it quite difficult but when you can take them off makes things so much easier often times I'll wait till the end before I clean out the insides of the drawers but with this one I'm just cleaning everything right away thank you now I'm not entirely sure what type of wood this is obviously it has been finished to be something along the lines of Walmart to give the impression that it's Walnut but I know for sure it's not what is a little bit unusual though and I don't think I've ever seen this on a dresser is that the edging on the sides and the front are solid wood and then there's a piece of veneer in the middle and what was interesting while I was trying to strip this off is that the finish on the solid wood was coming off super easy with just one application and the middle was very very difficult I ended up having to do three applications on the veneer portion of this and if you've seen my other videos where I use the same stripper It's very effective and it's kind of strange that it was so difficult to take whatever this finishes off [Music] another element of this particular piece that I don't love is the two-tone wood it's actually all the same type of wood which in this case on the drawer faces is veneer but they've used two different colors to make it look like it's two different types of wood so whatever I end up doing to this in the end I want it all to be one and then that routed out section can just be a detail on its own instead of having the routered section and the two tones of wood I just find it a little bit busy for kind of what I like to see [Music] thank you foreign I just wasn't having much luck getting this off with the regular putty knife so because this stripper has softened the Finish using my carbide scraper makes taking off what is left much easier [Music] I generally like to start with a fairly High sanding grip so this is 120 and you can see not much is happening except on the solid wood areas I think the solid wood areas are a different type of wood than the veneer but I'm not 100 sure but the reason I think that is because of the way the stain has soaked into the veneer and not the solid wood and as you can see here they are slightly different colors as well thank you there are a couple burn marks on this piece I'm not quite sure how I'm going to address that yet because at this point I'm still up in the air with what I want to do initially when I saw this piece it was so dark and dingy that my brain immediately went light and beachy and Airy and it was right around this part of the process where I started to move to the dark side a little bit and I thought well what if I did this piece in a very dark stain like a black stain or a black wash I've done so many white washes and beige washes and although I love it I wanted to do something a little bit different for me and I thought this piece would be perfect to kind of experiment with that on thank you one of these drawers had a strange split and the solid wood drawer face has split here but you can see where the veneer is still attached I think one of the reasons this happened is that these glue blocks which normally have glue under them did not so there was nothing kind of holding that bottom piece together to the rest of the drawer so what I'm going to do I'm going to use a glue syringe and without taking the entire drawer apart I'm going to try to get as much glue into the crack as I can all the way along and also add some glue under these support blocks [Music] foreign and when I put my clamps on they have to be fairly strategically placed but when I put these on and apply some pressure you should start to see the glue squeeze out in those areas [Music] okay it's finally time to take the legs off but first I need to clean up this gross bottom I don't often see gum on the underside of dressers I do quite often on side tables and bedside tables but this is the first for underneath a dresser [Music] this step is optional but I like to do it especially on the grungier looking pieces and that is to take 150 grit sand pad and just very lightly sand that material foreign not going to be stripping I'm just going to be sanding directly so I'm cleaning them off first and then I can go ahead and do all of the flat sections with the surf prep with a normal sanding pad and then I'm going to put on a half inch foam pad to do the rounded areas and what this will do is allow it to keep that rounded profile without the risk of sanding it off and then I'm going to repeat the whole thing for all four legs [Music] [Music] um [Music] [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] [Music] foreign foreign [Music] see the vision just yet but he'll get better all of these little plastic pieces I'm pulling off are to help keep the drawer moving perfectly straight in and out and most of them I think there were only two that were still intact the rest were all broken so I had to pull them off these wooden guides get kind of chewed up over time so I always like to sand them down [Music] too [Music] I'm kind of a weirdo when it comes to cleaning my shop I like to clean all the sanding dust when I'm done the majority of the work before I move on to the next phases I thought about using an odie's oil stain on these pieces but from my experience with the lighter Woods getting that dark Rich opaque or semi-opaque look that I'm going for I haven't really mastered that yet but I was actually speaking with Odis oil yesterday the Canadian rep lives not too far from me and he's actually figured out a really good formula for making an opaque stain so I'm going to be doing that in an upcoming video I'm spraying some shellac to the inside which will help seal up any lingering odor now as I mentioned I wasn't loving the original Hardware this is as soon as I saw this piece these are the polls that I had in mind and this was actually a gift from Brian and Molly so thank you so much for this this is perfect for this piece I think I love the brushed brass but I also love the Triangular shape and I think it's going to play really well off these ruddered details but as you can see this creates a problem because the original Hardware had two holes I only need one so I need to fill these and there's a couple ways to do it you can use wood filler I like using dowels but the smallest dowel I have is a little bit larger than the hole so I'm going to drill some new holes and I'll cut off the dowel put a little bit of wood glue in and that will help seal it up now I want you to pay attention here this is what happens when you go Full Tilt straight down with pressure on veneer on the second hole I'm going to get up to speed first and then I'm gonna push down and wait till you see the difference in the holes you can also use a piece of painters tape to help keep the veneer from splitting but in my experience just waiting until the drill bit has cut through the veneer before you put a lot of downward pressure will make a huge difference foreign glue in the hole I'm just going to Pound Down the dowel until it's almost flat and then I'm going to grab something that's completely flat and use the Mallet on that to push it flush with the surface [Music] for this one there's a little bit chipped I'm just going to push a tiny bit of wood glue under that and that should be enough to hold that down [Music] foreign [Music] wood filler just to make sure if there's any little gaps that it's nice and smooth now if I was going to paint these drawers these dowel holes would completely disappear when you do a stain over plugs like this you can often still see them it's just there's no good way to really camouflage that unless you're using toners and stuff which I'm not going to be using so there is a chance that you will still see these but hopefully they will blend in enough that they don't immediately jump out at you foreign [Music] this is an amazing little gadget for figuring out exactly where your holes need to be there's a section in the back that slides that fits up at the top or bottom of the drawer and then you have options clearly this handle doesn't need two holes so I'm going to steal one from the side and put it right in this little Center area and right in front of that there is a zero Mark so what I need to do is figure out where the exact middle of my drawer is and I am terrible at fractions always have been so I have this app to help me do this [Music] so 11 and 3 8 is exactly the center of the drawer and this is the app that I use then I need to figure out exactly how far down the drawer it needs to be and it's three and a half inches so I'm going to set this guide here on the back to three and a half inches and then that little lip will hook onto the drawer and I just place it where it needs to go so I'm just going to double check my measurement here and then grab a clamp to hold this in place while I drill foreign because I can't help myself I have to triple check that this is in the correct spot and it is so away I go again getting up to speed before I put downward pressure will help get a near perfect hole through veneer [Music] so that will fit just like that now if you're looking at the holes above and wondering why I'm drilling a hole below I'll just remind you that the original Hardware had a drop element to it so technically the middle of that drop pull is where my new hole is so this is definitely the center [Music] this stain is by Minwax there's a water-based a semi-transparent stain I've never used this before and the legs because they're solid wood and I can easily sand off if I make a mistake or if I don't like the look I'm opting to do all my testing on the legs I don't want solid black or I would have just painted the piece I want a little bit of the wood grain to show through but not a whole lot and because this is something probably like Birch I already know it's going to absorb a little bit weird and possibly be blotchy [Music] thank you so the second one I'm going to do I'm going to add some wood conditioner first just to see if that helps though from having used wood conditioner before I know that it will likely make it a little bit lighter now initially I was going to go with something light and there's always someone every time I put a clear coat on light colored wood they say oh I like the original raw would look better it doesn't matter what you put on it this color is going to turn this color when you put anything clear on it so the raw wood look is not really doable unless you bleach the wood first or do a light paint wash which as I said was my initial plan for this piece but because I wasn't able to get all of the dye stain out of this light colored wood I'm actually glad that I switched things up and decided to go darker because it will camouflage that especially on the top [Music] so I'm adding the stain now to the piece that has been conditioned and lightly sanded and you can see as soon as I start to wave it back it's definitely lighter than the first one I'm not 100 sure if to me it looks any less blotchy but it is definitely lighter and lighter is not the direction I want to go so at this point in my experimentation I'm liking first one I did better [Music] now for my next test I am going to be using a little bit of coal black and I'm going to apply this straight to the wood and then wipe it back much like the dark stain I just wanted to see what this would look like this with straight paint with no water in it is not the best idea for anything larger than probably this leg because if I were to try this on the top there's no way I would be able to wipe it off before it started to dry and it would just be a disaster but I just wanted to see what the difference is and you can see it's very similar to the stain [Music] but for my last leg I am going to do a proper wash where I use water mixed with the paint now this is the ratio I would use if I was doing a beige wash or a white wash but you can see here that is just definitely not strong enough with the black to really deposit much pigment a black paint wash for me is not going to work for this either [Music] and also you can see that the paint has absorbed into those more porous areas as well so I think that's the worst of all four if you want to see a close-up hair this first one is the one with the wood conditioner [Music] this is the first one that I did with just the straight up stain and I think what I'm going to do is actually just do multiple coats of it this was the one with the straight black paint and then this last one is just terrible so I'm gonna get rid of these ones I'm going to sand them off again in a minute but for now this has dried long enough that I can add on another coat just to see what happens I have a feeling that the more coats you add the less the blotchiness is going to show up at least that's my hope [Music] [Music] after a light hand sand to smooth down that raised grain and giving you a quick wipe I'm going to go ahead and apply the stain and I'm showing this first section here in real time because you have to move really fast with the water-based stain it's not like an oil-based stain where you can take a minute or two and move stuff around this stuff dries really quickly foreign I did also consider ebonizing the wood with a solution of let's say vinegar and steel wool which has a great outcome I just didn't have enough time before this video had to come out to do that so that's why I'm going this route I'm just looking right now at the time stamp for this particular clip and it was 47 seconds from start to finish to get this stain on and then it's time to wipe it back very carefully minutes to get all of the stain on and then wipe wiped off and you can see here it's quite light but it's the same as the furniture leg it's going to get darker when I do my second coat all of these little routered edges I'm letting the stain settle in and dry completely before I put my next coat on [Music] now earlier I showed me raising the Grain and what that means I'm going to show you a little clip here when you apply water these Little Fibers will raise up and make the Surface quite rough so before you apply a water-based stain it's a good idea to raise the Grain and what you want to do is just add a little bit of water let it completely dry and then take a fairly fine grit sand pad and just very lightly sand those edges smooth you don't want to completely sand them off or when you add your water-based stain everything's going to raise up again because you just sanded off the work you did but with some Woods too it can also help with the depth of color when you're applying a stain now again I'm showing the first part of doing the top here in real time because I am moving quite quickly so quickly that I'm flinging this stain everywhere which is a huge pet peeve of mine I like to work pretty clean but I just had to move so fast with this top and this particular stain is not recommended for large surfaces like probably huge table tops or floors because of the fact that it dries so quickly now often you can add extenders to water-based stains or sometimes even a little splash of water it says on the instructions not to dilute it but I have done it with some of the other water-based stains that I've used with good results so I mean that's up to you if you want to try it I did have a little trouble at the end here on the top with it already drying too much to wipe off you can see it grabbed the cloth right out of my hand and I'm glad there's no audio for the shop because I was cursing a little bit with how quickly it was drying and admittedly first coat on the top I'm not thrilled with but I'm trying to just stay calm carry on and realize that I am going to be doing additional coats [Music] I let my first coat dry for several hours before doing my second coat and once that was completely dry the next day then I went in with some lacquer and I'm opting to use lacquer because it's pretty easy to apply and I think it'll be a nice finish for this particular look [Music] you don't have to sand between coats of locker but because I work in a non-dust-free space I like to just take a white pad and just make sure there's no dust nibs on the surface before I do additional coats you can see me here I'm applying my third coat at this point [Music] thank you [Music] and like I mentioned sometimes little dust particles show up and I just use these little tweezers to pull them off [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] foreign the few plastic guides that remain were quite dirty and I always for some reason like to clean these at the very end I know a lot of people for some reason don't even bother to clean these but it's just one of those little things you can do to kind of make your work stand out [Music] I'm using Howard feed and wax in the drawers which have been completely sanded inside and out and this is another way to make something old look new and just feel fresh and smell nice oh [Music] foreign try to salvage pieces from vintage dressers and this little collection of drawer guides came from other pieces so I'm going to wash these up in the sink and use them on all of the drawers that are missing them [Music] if you've ever flipped a piece of furniture you know there's no feeling like finally putting the hardware on and while this maybe didn't turn out exactly the way I expected I am happy with the results given that it was the first time using a new product that is fairly difficult to use in the first place and I think a huge improvement over what I started with only a few things left to do now and that is to clean up this back panel and again this is something most people skip because this was already partially falling off I decided to pull it off all the way and just clean it up [Music] relax normally I don't paint or do anything to The Backs aside from clean them but because there are no markings on this or anything distinguishing it or identifying it I'm opting to add a little bit of shellac on after cleaning and then I'm going to spray a matte black primer on it just because it's not very nice to look at foreign [Music] here I'm using a 1500 grit marker Milan gray pad which is the same thing that I normally use to apply odie's oil and this just gives a slightly heavier buff if you will before my last coat of locker which I'm applying here [Music] [Music] oh [Music] home stretch now thank you for sticking with me I know this one is a little bit longer than it probably seems it should be because of all the prep work but it's part of the process and I wanted to share it with you I'm finally getting to use my new compressor that I bought with my most recent influx of buy me a coffee money so thank you so much to everyone who helped make this possible and also to Steve who sent me this pneumatic crayon stapler this is going to make putting these little plastic pieces back on super easy as well as reattaching the back panel foreign [Music] [Music] holy smokes what an awesome couple of days of work it was a bit frustrating at times and as usual I was second guessing my choices but in the end I'm really happy with this it looks like something you get at a high-end store but obviously done for way less money working with the stain was a little bit tricky but it was fun to kind of show you how I think my way through things sometimes just to quickly go over some of the products that I used I cleaned everything with either the heavy duty Citrus Degreaser by Zep or this all-purpose cleaner used Bullseye shellac on the inside of the piece and then this Minwax semi-transparent wood stain in the color to Black Mohawk pre-catalyzed lacquer in a satin finish painters touch flat black primer on the back panel and then Howard feeding wax in the drawers okay let's finally see it thank you for watching thank you [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] [Music] thank you

Channel: Transcend Furniture Gallery

Views: 91,324

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

Id: cSXEKfPv2QM

Length: 36min 7sec (2167 seconds)

Published: Sun May 07 2023