Tag

Gilding Wax

Removing Damaged Veneer

During one of my Estate Sale shopping trips I found an old Victrola record cabinet that needed some fixing up. About a quarter of the veneer on the top of the cabinet was missing. A chunk of wood was also missing on one of the doors on the front.

For the door I had to take out the old screw and add a longer one so it would connect from the bottom of the hinge into the wood that wasn’t damaged. My first attempt didn’t work but I eventually was able to get a long enough screw into place so whe door would open and close with the hinge.

I used wood putty and sanded it so I could paint over it.

Back to the veneer top. I’ve used wood putty to fix veneer before but this area was too big to fix so it needed to come off. I tried just scraping it but quickly realized that wasn’t going to work. So I did a quick search on Pinterest and found a solution.

I took an old towel and got it wet and laid it over the veneer I wanted to remove. Be careful not to get any veneer you don’t want to remove wet. You don’t want any warping on veneer you want to keep. I would scrape off the parts that would come off easily and then lay the towel back down and spray it with a water bottle to let it soak into the veneer. I had to do this a few times. The towel needs to be pretty wet, not dripping wet but almost. I would let it sit for about an hour to let it get into and under the veneer. The glue holding the veneer down will soften up making it easier to scrape off. You can see from the picture I just used a putty knife.

This method worked really well for me, and then I just needed to sand it down for a smooth finish and paint it!

I painted this one Annie Sloan Napoleonic Blue. I finished it with clear wax and added Annie Sloan Bright Silver Gilding Wax to some of the edges. I replaced the old pulls with small glass door pulls to finish the look I wanted.

The record player had been removed from the inside so it makes a great storage cabinet.

I love taking taking an old piece of furniture and fixing it up so it’s beautiful and ready to be used again.

Hope you find this helpful. And thanks for stopping by. If you want to see more transformations and helpful hints take a minute to sign up for my emails.

Cindy

Annie Sloan and General Finishes make over

I love to find great pieces of furniture to upcycle. Sometimes I find a piece and know right away what I want to do with it. Sometimes I think about it for a while before I start the make over. I spent some time thinking about this project and even thought I had a good idea of what I wanted the end result to be, this project changed several times during the process.

I started by sanding the tops of these tables in hopes of staining the wood inlay. I decided to try out a wood stripper for the edges of the top to remove all of the stain and polyurethane top coat.

The wood stripper worked great with a stiff nylon brush. It removed all of the original stain from the crevices, but it was really messy. Like REALLY messy. But by far better than trying to sand it out of the crevices. Unfortunately when I tried to stain the top, the stain was not even over the different wood inlays and the wood edge. Sigh 😔 So General Finishes Gel Stain to the rescue! You may remember my post Painting and Staining our stair railing part 2 , I used a mix of GF Nutmeg and Grey. For these tables I used the same mix and it covered the top beautifully.

With that disaster taken care of I painted the body of these tables Annie Sloan Paris Gray. I wanted to add some Pure White and Silver accents. I painted the cut outs on the legs with a small brush and originally I painted the drawers white as well as the corner cut outs. In my head that looked better. In reality it was too much white. So I painted over the drawer fronts and the corner cut outs with Paris Gray.

I distressed it, used a clear and dark wax and then highlighted the buttom edge of the table and legs with Annie Sloan Bright Silver Gilding Wax. This took a while. 😉 But completely worth the time. All of these products help to bring out the shape and character of this piece. The beautiful handles on the drawers got a coat of spray paint and these tables are done!

This wasn’t exactly what I envisioned when I started this project but I love the end product now that they are done.

 

It takes some time and sometimes several different products but getting to the end of a project is always satisfying. Don’t be afraid to change it up if it’s not working out as you want it to. There’s always a solution if you come across a hiccup.

Leave a comment or a question if you have one!

And as always, thanks for taking a look at my blog 😊

Cindy