Furniture Fridays: Hello Dreamy Driftwood Chairs! a learn-from-my-mistakes-tutorial

Let me tell you about these chairs which were the dreaded chipping cherry stain, but that, after a lot of work, were re-stained beautiful, dreamy Driftwood stain.  My husband's mother was acquiring antique rose chairs for her kitchen and didn't want these anymore.  

As you can see, the stain on them is pretty rough.  I have 8 brothers-and-sisters-in-law so you can imagine the wear and tear on these chairs! 

As I've mentioned before, cherry stain just isn't my favorite, yet lots of antique furniture is cherry because it was a very popular color due to it's richness. But since I don't like it, for a quick fix, I thought I'd just spray paint them.  You know, because spray paint can work magic!

Unfortunately, in this case, due to the age of the stain and varnish, and the fact that it was chipping from years of use, the spray paint ended up showing all the chips and marks.  

And although I used my trusty sanding deglosser, the paint still went on blotchily and just ended up not as attractive as I had hoped.

 I like my paint to be smooth and not chippy, so it became a goal to strip the chairs entirely and start from scratch. 

Ah, the look of paint ready to be stripped off!  It's sort of liberating.

Little did I know the extent as to which I would have to go to get these babies smooth and pristine again!  It was a trying project but in short, here are some things I learned while doing this lengthy project (I took the time, so hopefully, your project will go faster).

•  Vintage varnish is very, very hard to get off - VERY!  In fact, I pretty much was finished with trying to strip these four, when my far more studious and patient husband stepped in to help me finish this project - they'd still be sitting in the basement otherwise.

• After trying various strippers, we finally found one that worked amazingly: Tuff-Strip by Crown .  
• We had tried Citrustrip, which is what I normally use; an acetone based stripper; a stripper specifically made for antique/cherry stain; but the one above worked the very best for these antique chairs! 

• Most of the strippers say to let it sit for 10-15 minutes to allow it to work, but don't let it dry on there.  We found that it dried faster than we could cover all four chairs.  So,
• Do one chair at a time!
• We tried to cover the chairs with plastic so that it could sit longer with the stripper on it. But
• Plastic didn't work to keep it wet enough

Other things we learned: 

• On old or soft wood, use a plastic stripping tool; we used metal and really gouged up the chairs in places!  
• Use a fine grit sandpaper something like 220.  We used 120, which is for fine, but I used my electric sander and it really ripped the wood up a bit.  So, go easy on the sanding of older furniture.   

• When applying strippers, it is a good idea to use thick gloves.  The food-grade gloves I had fell apart completely while I was wiping the stripper onto the chairs. 

• If you are trying to go for a lighter stain color from a red or dark stain, it is a good idea to bleach the wood after you've pulled off as much previous stain as you can.

• Then let the bleach and the sunlight work together to lighten the wood further.

• Don't hesitate to use toothbrushes, both to get the stripper in tight places, and then again to apply stain where your paint brush or staining cloth (an old sock) just can't get.

*SIGH* The finished chairs.  These seriously took us weeks to finish!  But it was so worth it, don't you think? 

Whatever Wednesday: The Pop Shoppe and Hope of Homemade Rootbeer

Are you a fan of homemade root beer?  So far it's not my favorite thing to drink, but my husband and kids absolutely LOVE homemade root beer!  My mother-in-law made it at least every summer while my husband was growing up.  Currently, she is moving out of her home to another nice home across the country and she gave us her antique-still-usable pop bottle sealer!

 

How cool is this?

 We also inherited these super cute glass "Pop Shop" bottles.

So I see a great deal of root beer making in our near future.  Have you ever tried making root beer?  If so how'd it go?   

We're moving this weekend...

We were happily living in our home of ten years last year, when we fell in love with some land and the idea of living closer to family. 

This weekend, we are moving to that land and close to family.

Whatever Wednesday: The Day My Husband Begged Me to NOT Clean the House

A few weeks ago, right after having a lot of family over for a long visit, as he was leaving for work, my husband, Nate, begged me to NOT clean the house. As I guffawed at this remark and kind of looked at the messes in each room and the large piles of laundry, he came back to me and said: "Really, please don't clean the house today. I want to use the messy house as an object lesson for our family night tonight."

Ever the teacher, Nate is always looking for ways to teach our children how to be better (though in the case of our house, we all could use help in keeping it tidy!).

So, instead I baked and made up some mixes for future baking and worked on furniture (which is waaaay more fun than cleaning!!).

Just about every Monday evening, our family gets together to have a lesson.  Sometimes it's spiritual in nature, sometimes it's learning how to treat friends, other times it is just getting together to play a game or go on an outing.  Usually we start out with a prayer, sometimes a scripture, we usually sing a song (because we all enjoy singing) and almost always play a game or watch a short video (this particular Monday it was music videos by "OkGo").  You get the idea.

 Instruction on how to lead music.

We started out talking temples.  He asked the kids what they think of when they think of temples.  We got great answers like: eternal families, peaceful, etc.  And some crazy ones, which of course at the moment I can't remember.

Then Nate and I talked about how temples are peaceful partially because they are clean and neat and everything has a place.
We took a tour of our own home, quietly, no-one was to speak as we went to each and every room.  Then we ended back in the living room again. 

Nate asked the kids how did our house look?  Dirty, messy, cluttered.  Was it peaceful?  Hmmm, not really.

So, we made a goal to, together, clean it for five minutes each night.  For the first many days, we took about five minutes in each room.   This is separate from their regular, daily cleaning jobs. 

But as we kept things up, it turned into 15 minutes total and then about an average of 8 minutes total. And we can usually do it in the time of two songs from an MP3 player but our phrase to clean is: "Let's do our five minutes."  Or sometimes: "We forgot to do our five minutes!"   

If we kept it clean for a week, the kids were taken out for supper at a place of their choice. 

Keeping the house clean for a week = supper at a place of their choice.  This was their choice, The Dawg House Grill.

If we kept it clean for a month, then we'd have dinner and movie.  If we keep it up (the daily evening cleaning) for a year, the kids get a cash reward.  

We started this challenge on March 30th.  And we did so great!  ...for two and a half weeks.   But currently we are in the process of moving and the packing and sorting has taken it's toll.

So, when we missed a night last Friday (my dad was also visiting from out of state that night), the agreement was that we had to start over.  So, here we are on day five of the start over.

 We are determined to make this a habit!

Some things we've learned:

1. The kids sometimes groan when it's time to clean, but most of the time they are the ones to remind us.  Positive reinforcement works wonders people! aka: rewards
2. Let the kids help decide when to tidy.  One of my kids, the morning bird, wants to do her "five minutes" right after school so she can go to bed (and not be grouchy).
3. Also include the kids in determining what their positive reinforcement will be.  
4. Work with the children so they can see that it truly is a family goal.  We've found that working together as a family can be fun (especially when you listen to music and make it game-like).
5.  It's very hard to reach goals, but it's so very rewarding when you're able to complete one!  Taking the kids to The Dawg House Grill was such a small thing yet they loved every minute of it: being with mom and dad, having delicious food, trying out a new place, and who wouldn't love the picture of the gigantic purple and yellow bedecked bulldog?!  

Furniture Friday: A Damaged Family Heirloom Gets a Second Life

Recently my grandmother was moved from her home of 53 years into a senior living center.  It was a difficult move for her.   Years of living in the same home allowed for a great accumliation of lots of great stuff!  Well....there's a saying:

That was about right in this situation!  My dad and uncle weren't really excited about a lot of the stuff my grandmother had.  But man oh man, did I love a lot...A LOT of it! 

She was relieved to know that some of her beloved possessions were going to someone who was related to her.  And I was grateful to have some piece of her life in my future home.  It really was a win/win!  She has been in her new home for two years (does it take anyone else that long to get working on a project?) and she is enjoying her life there! 

Back to the items, one of that I accrued was an old damaged hanging shelf unit.  When I saw it, I thought: "Unique"  "Family Heirloom" and "this needs to have second life"

Each shelf was made of very thin (1/4"?) wood with both sides of the wood covered in veneer.  The top shelf's veneer was completely coming off. 

At first I wanted to just take it off and leave the wood plain, but with how old the piece is, as I tried to remove the veneer, the wood started to come with it. 

Then I thought I'd just cut off that top shelf and keep the whole unit with just the two center shelves, but I thought that would look asymmetrical, and I kinda like symmetry. 

So, I took some wood putty and filled in the spaces that had peeled off.

 
The drawers were also busted.  And I don't mean that they came disconnected!  The wood connecting the drawer front to the drawer sleeve was severed. 

To fix that, I just used E-6000 glue.  Worked like a charm!  I'm sure super glue or wood glue would have worked just as well, if not better, but I'm packing at the moment and all I could find was the E-6000. 

After fixing all of the above it was just a matter of some primer (spray paint) and a can of my current favorite colored spray paint. 

Except for fixing the veneer, this project was finished in about an hour.
 

 

Whatever Wednesday: Sometimes I Clean My Faucets Like This

Does anyone else have those new faucets with the "pull-out spray" instead of the one that sits beside the actual faucet?  Have you found it hard to clean the hard water and lime scale off of it?  Ours got so bad that it stopped going back into the faucet like it was suppose to and just hung dangling down.  It drove me crazy! 

I tried filling a plastic sandwich bag with Vinegar and then rubberbanding it to the tip of the spray, but it just doesn't work too well on those pull out spray faucets! 

But this worked:  Lots of cups and a jar to get it to just the right height.  And vinegar going all the way into the faucet.  And of course a rag....actually I don't know why the rag is there.  We'll say it's because I was hoping to catch any vinegar that fell out so I could clean something else? 
I'll say it again, this worked!!