stef makes.art creative projects by stephanie paulantis

Project Land: Night Stand Redo

March 29, 2013

I have been outside (in the sun! Amazing.) on project island the last few days, well into the throws of my spring cleaning project. One thing I’ve been working on the last few days is refinishing a nightstand.

drawers-to-redo

I spent several hours on Wednesday stripping it down with a heat gun to get it to this state.

after-heat-strip

There were a lot of layers, so getting it down to it’s original finish (some kind of varnish) and some paint was pretty satisfactory. My plan was to decopage, so I really just wanted a smooth, not 5 layers of paint surface.

Well, I started decopaging. I had a vague idea of the direction I wanted to go and figured I’d just wing it from there, but when I got into it a little I realized it was going to look terrible.

blegh

I decided that I wanted something more elegant, something simple. Something that would be even more work, in other words. I hauled the thing over to my parents (who have more refinishing supplies on hand than I do… does it count if I’m using up other’s people stashes and not just my own?) and zip stripped the rest of the crap off of it, then sanded that baby smooth.

after-sanding

All the while I knew I was going to do something with stain, because I have stain and I’m using what I have. Plus I remembered seeing this amazing use of stain on Sawdust and Embryos. I went to look that up, and also came across thisawesome stencil stain technique, which I also love. I decided I was going to do a thistle (my beau’s favorite flower) using the wood glue resist, but I was going to freehand it because at this point the idea of spending even more hours cutting out a stencil was out of the question.

I then decided that it would be crazy to paint a thistle with wood glue, when I wouldn’t be able to see what I was doing and oh my god the detail. I settled on the second favorite flower of my dearest, the Poppy. Wayyyy easier.

I also opted to go back to Sawdust and Embryo’s shading technique, as it’s a technique that is more well suited for my working style (that is to say, haphazard, messy, and you sort of make it up as you go). I tried it out on the side of the nightstand that won’t really show, and I figured worse comes to worse, I’ll just stain the whole thing black and call it good. Well, even though I’m not much of a flower person, I am extremely pleased with how things are going.

poppy-stain poppy-close-up

I’d like to have some better composition on the front and the side that will show, but I’m so happy with how they look… It reminds me of an x-ray or ghost flowers or something. Beth is totally right, it’s a lot like working with charcoal, and it’s really pretty fun. It was a nice way to wind down yesterday evening after a hard day of nasty chemicals and orbital sanders.

I’m excited to finish the project and show you the final results, but I thought I should at least get something up here to keep you guys all updated as to what I’ve been up to!

(PS, my computer decided that it doesn’t like charging anymore, it decided this just last night. I’m hoping it’s just the charger, which will be easy to replace, as opposed to a headache of opening up the computer and fiddling with the jack… so here’s hoping for the best! Send good computer vibes my way!)