New To Old

New to Old, the story of the first rescue and a new direction for my writing.

I recently came across a small table which had quite some extensive stain damage on the top. I got it for 12euros and I thought I would try to learn a thing or two about fixing some things.

I have a number of antique furniture pieces from my grandparents in the house and if I learn well enough, I might be able to fix them up myself. In time. At least that’s the plan, maybe one piece at a time. It will certainly save some money, considering how prices have skyrocketed around here. Someone actually quoted me 1500euro for installing two sliding doors! Luckily our handyman was free and did it for 600.

This means a new direction for my writing here, considering I have had trouble to keep up with it.

So here is try number one, the little coffee table. I am not sure exactly what style this is, but I wanted to give it a better look.

The first thing I did was apply paint stripper. I just brushed q thick layer on and waited half an hour. After which I scraped it off. Wear gloves if you do this and open the windows.

It efficiently removed all the lacquer on the table. After scraping all the stripper off, I wiped it down well with white spirit. It neutralizes the paint stripper and cleans the wood.

Then I sanded it down as much as I could. I also filled some cracks and holes with wood filler and sanded some more. This creates a lot of dust and needs quite a bit of cleaning and vacuuming in the area.

After sanding, I stained it. I picked a teak color stain for this table. I applied two layers of stain.

After the stain dried and I (more or less successfully) painted a little over the cracks I had filled with wood filler, I applied three layers of half matt lacquer. I know it will be quite used, so I wanted a modern lacquer which will not stain white if water drops on it, like Shellac does.

Here it is finished. It was a birthday gift for my mom last week. I still plan to change the drawer handle but I wanted to pick one together with her. Something golden, because she’s going through a gold phase. Golden wallpaper, gold foil, etc. :)

As you can see, I need to improve my painting skills. Maybe on the next project.