DIY: Refinishing Furniture

Trash to treasure is one of our favorite things to do. So when we spotted this piece we knew it had to come home with us:



This piece was a little different than our usual let's spray paint it and done finished. These piece had a wood laminate top that was in pretty bad condition:



We didn't want to give up on the piece so we just started to peel it away:



When it started to peel off easily we were in heaven then the fun stopped. We needed to use a spatula/scraper and hammer to loosen up some of the pieces of laminate. By taking the spatula/scraper and placing it under a corner of the laminate you are then able to hammer the spatula and get in under the laminate and slowly start picking away at it.



Here is the top with all of the laminate removed:



Due to the removal of the laminate there were some spots of the top that now had nicks in due to the spatula/scraper. Not great, but again not a reason to give up on a project.

All you need is MH Ready Patch:



Just apply it in the problem spots in thin layers, let it dry in between coats (about 30 mins) and lightly sand with 180 grit:



The whole process took about 2 hours. Now the easy part! Spray Painting. Since we worked so hard on the prep work before hand we wanted to continue and paint it properly so the next step was primer:





Once that dried we did a light sanding with 200 grit sand paper and then finished up with a high gloss coat of black spray paint:






So with 1 can of primer and 2 cans of spray paint we were on our way to new piece. The drawers came next and with the help of left over grass cloth wallpaper and glue we were almost done.



Cut pieces of grasscloth about 2" larger all around and make sure to apply paste to the paper:


Also apply paste to the drawer front:



Smooth out bubbles:



You can then use a razor blade to trim off the excess and get a nice clean cut on your drawer:



All finished:



Due the nature of the grasscloth you need to take a couple of steps before you attach the handles.

First take a small screwdriver and place in the opening from the inside of the drawer to pierce the grasscloth:


Then take the screw from the handle and full pierce the opening from the front of the drawer:



Once that's done you can attach your hardware:


All done:



We spread this out into two weekends, but we estimate it took about 7 hours total from start to finish and about $12 on spray-painting cans the rest of the supplies we had at home.

Whew if you read all that bravo. Hope these steps come in handy at some point. :)