DIY furniture makeovers: the results

Last week, I promised you results. So today, I come bearing gifts: the outcome of four furniture refinishing projects completed over the course of a few months. The process introduced us to skills (and muscles) that we didn’t know we had; apparently, they were lying dormant, only to be revealed when our need for attractive home furnishings became too much to bear.

First on the project list was this cherry-colored mirror, which I thought would look more modern in a darker mahogany stain.

Before:

Little did we know that tackling this project might break us before we’d really gotten started. Unfortunately, the process of sanding and staining is much more onerous than sanding, priming and painting. As I advised last week, when you’re getting ready to paint a piece of furniture, you just need to sand it enough to rough up the surface for proper paint adhesion. When you want to stain a piece of furniture, however, you need to sand it first to the bare wood (see below). And that process, my friends, is no walk in the park.

During:

Once the entire mirror frame was bare, we painted a very thin coat of stain onto the thirsty wood. After 20 minutes, we wiped down the surface with a clean rag to remove any excess stain—this is important, as any unabsorbed stain won’t end up drying completely—and then topped it off with three thin coats of the same eco-friendly poly coating (Safecoat Acrylacq) we’d eventually use on the painted pieces. But these hours of manual labor paid off! We were left with a dark, glossy, sophisticated-looking mirror when all was said and done.

After:

Ah—and then there were the chairs.

Before:

What can I say? The blond wood veneer on these chairs needed to be covered up as soon as humanly possible. After Ted sanded, primed, and painted the set with three coats of Behr’s Pot of Cream—these were his pet project—we deemed these fit to be placed around our dinner table.

After:

This next piece is one of my proudest refinishing accomplishments. I needed my own little writing space, and my great-grandmother’s desk would serve the purpose perfectly—and add a lovely touch of history to the apartment, too. Unfortunately, the excessively dark, worn-down wood was less than inspiring. I handled the entire refinishing process on this one, using Behr’s Pot of Cream again for the color, and picked out a couple of finishing touches for it as well. I’ll show those off for you soon! Till then, I’ll just say this: I smile every time I sit down to write or edit photos now. And, heck, every time I walk past. I love this desk.

Before:

After:

Lastly, a piece that probably looks quite familiar to you. I thought I’d show it off one more time, though, to put it into context among all the other work that’s been done. With all the hard work behind us, it’s especially satisfying to scroll through the mismatched “before” pictures, and then look at all the coordinated “afters” for comparison—the red, cream, and mahogany accents feel right at home together.

Before:

After:

There’s much more work to be done in this little apartment of ours, but for now, we’re resting on our laurels a little bit. It’s something we often forget to do before moving onto the next big project, but I’d fully recommend this last step for anyone tackling a similar endeavor: enjoy the fruits of your labor! You deserve it.