Refinished Bedside Tables

As promised yesterday, here is the post about the tables.  If you missed the post about the price breakdown check it out here.

All dressed up with new knobs.

Before I get into it a quick word about my before picture.  Sometimes I read blogs and they talk about how they forgot to take a before picture and in my head I think, "You're a blogger, how did you forget a before picture?"

Well, I forgot a before.  All I have is this crappy photo of the entire room.  I'm so ashamed.

Hard to tell but the drawer pulls are all dangly.  Okay, onto the transformation.

The theme of this project, as well as the door seems to have been adaption.  My original plans fell through but I was able to adapt them into something else I loved and I'm very happy with the results.

The plan for the bedside tables was to paint them but leave the top stained, like this picture.  I love this look so I was excited to try my hand at re-creating it.  I pulled the bedside tables outside to sand and get ready and noticed that they're not quite as solid as I first thought and they're made with a wood veneer.  I'm not willing to put a lot of time into staining a veneer so instead I decided to paint the entire thing and incorporate the stain on the headboard instead.  In the end I was so grateful I didn't stain the top, these were a pain to work with and I was happy to not have to worry about carefully taping and staining and spraying.

So I removed the handles and sanded them using a palm sander.  Honestly, I didn't sand them all that well because I hate sanding almost more than anything else.  I did make sure to wipe them down really well using a dry cloth first and then a damp cloth.

I then primed them and primed them again.

 

I wish I had used one more coat of primer, I probably would have gotten better spray paint coverage and used less paint if I'd done one more coat but they were such a pain to paint that I got a bit lazy.  Lesson learned though, spray paint is expensive and primer is cheap.

Once they were all primed I sprayed and sprayed using Rust-o-leum Heirloom White until I ran out of paint.  Then the project stalled for a week and they sat in our entry way while I found more paint.

On this project I had a bit of a miserable spray painting experience.  I already mentioned that I was forced to pause between coats of paint since I ran out and it was after they dried that I noticed they had the texture of sand paper.  It was really horrible and not usual for spray paint.  It led to me having to sand again, which as mentioned above, I hate.  Since I've never had this problem I wrote an email to Rustoleum, they responded by telling me I stood too far away.  I'm positive this wasn't the case, I even measured the distance when I put on the last coat.  I live in a very windy city which means if anything I tend to stand too close to my project, I feel certain I had a defective can.  There were also spots where it seemed like the paint wasn't mixed well even though I shook and shook.  Since it was a white paint you could see brown spots in certain places.  I'm glazing so it's not a big deal but I'm not super impressed.  I didn't have the same problem with my last can.  I would have appreciated a better response from Rustoleum and I would love to stop using their product but my wallet doesn't allow it.  A can of Krylon paint is $5.99, a can of double cover Rustoleum (meaning it's 2 cans in one) is $6.99.  Anyway, enough about my spray paint problem...

I finally got the paint, finished that part and then waited until the door was together and painted so I could glaze them at the same time.  At least I could move them from the entry way back up to the bedroom (sans handles) where they sat for a month and a half.

The door finally turned into a headboard so I could go ahead and glaze.  I've never done this before so I read lots of internet tips and started the project feeling a bit like an expert.  I had anticipated that things would change and I would realize I knew nothing about glazing but surprisingly things went pretty much as I had expected without any hitches. Glazing is easy.

I used Behr brand Faux Glaze and Rust-oleum Espresso paint.  The instructions said to use 4 parts glaze to 1 part water.  I decided I'd want about half as much glaze as primer and I used an entire can of primer.  I took the size of the can of primer, divided it by half and then again by 4.  That told me how much 1 part was, it ended up being around 125 ml.  Then I took a plastic cup and filled it with 125 ml of water and drew a line with a sharpie.  Then I filled it with another 125 ml of water and drew another line so I had a 1 part line and a 2 part line.  This gave me something to measure with.

I took a bucket and added one part paint and it was the most beautiful chocolate brown colour, then I added my 4 parts glaze, stirred and ended up with this.

Not sure if your monitor will show you exactly what I saw but to me it looked pretty purple.
At this point I was nervous that I was about to paint everything purple but I was determined to push forward so I took a foam brush and lightly brushed some paint on a small area, then I took a rag and wiped it off.  I didn't want very much glaze (especially since it was purple) so I wiped off almost as much as I could.  I mostly left the glaze in the cracks.  I'm really pleased with my results and it does not look purple.  Two things I'd do differently next time though, I would have glazed with a black paint to avoid the colour above and I also had WAY too much glaze!  You put so little on that you can't even tell I made a dent in my bucket.  I should have used a quarter less and I still probably would have had too much. Now I have a ton of glaze left and nothing to do with it.

Here's an unglazed drawer beside a glazed drawer.  Not a huge difference but just enough to make them pop a bit.  The wood grain on these tables really picked up the glaze nicely.

After this all that was left was to clear coat it with Varathane and attach the new hardware and it was done.

One more crappy before to go with an awesome after.

Come back tomorrow and I'll show the door to headboard transformation and you can see these in the room.