I’m back and fixing furniture!

Hi all!

I have dropped off the twig of late, with regards to blogging… my Dad’s heart surgery,two deaths in the family and surgery for me have all taken their toll.

I am feeling reinvigorated now though and am back on the horse – so to speak. No dancing for another two weeks though… I’m looking at that light at the end of the tunnel and just cannot WAIT for it to arrive… surely it isn’t an oncoming train after all the events of the last few months!! :0)

So… here is something I have finally finished though! I took a scuzzy looking black bookcase, pulled it apart, stripped it down, sanded it back, and then stopped…

My original plan was to sand off the rough bits and repaint, then it was strip it back completely and then repaint… but then… I saw the beautiful wood that was lurking underneath.

My real problem though was that the top two shelves – the two on the left of the above photo – are different wood to the rest of the bookcase and so the question was then ‘to stain or not to stain’.

I love the look of wood au naturel but I wanted the finished product to have a cohesive look – not a hodge podge of different woods all cobbled together… although that would have been appropriate as I think from all the extra holes in it that this is a refashioned piece. I think it was something else in a former life. :-)

Anyway, to cut a far too long story short… I ended up giving it one very light coat of a walnut stain, applied with a rag, then many, many, many coats of a satin finish – sanding between each coat.

And here’s a before and after shot…

I did like the look of the black paint – gave it a kind of jappaned look – but the natural wood did need to be released!

Hooray! One project down. Oh, two actually… I also touched up the chips on four figurines I bought on a trip to Cleveland in June AND put them up on the wall!

Who knew that little plaster Asian figurines go with the Creature Of The Black Lagoon, chandeliers and red ceilings?

It feels good to get two more things ticked off the To Do list… I think this month’s motto just might have to be ‘All’s well that ends…” :0)