Sassy Red Bedroom Set

My very favorite thing about refinishing furniture has to be all the awesome people I meet.  Cool people like cool furniture I guess. :)  Connie, the lady I refinished this red bedroom set for, is one of those "cool" people.  I LOVE her!  I felt like she was family and I'd know her and her husband forever!  I'm so glad I was able to refinish her stuff.  She was very daring and decided to have her oak bedroom set refinished in bright red. 

Here is the before.  As most husbands do, Connie's husband wondered why she would want to paint a perfectly good piece of wood furniture.  LOL  They just don't get it!

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Stubborn Dresser

This dresser was supposed to be a blue gray, but it WAS NOT cooperating!  Someone had tried to color in the chipping finish with some mysterious red stuff.  I should have taken a close up, but I didn't think it was going to give me so much trouble!

 First I primed, then I primed again, then I tried sealing it.  Then I searched the internet to see if anyone else had a magic cure for "bleed through". NOPE!

 So, I said "FINE!  You can be red!"

 "But you're getting black glaze whether you like it or not!"

 We all know red is my favorite color, so I can hardly blame this dresser for wanting to be red.  We all want to stand out a little, right?  I think she turned out beautiful!  I guess the blue gray will be for another day.

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New Hall Tree Turned Old!

Yup, this is a piece of furniture that most people would LOVE just as it is!  But, this is going in Heidi's house and she likes things to look old.  So, here is the before of this Pier 1 Hall Tree...

 And after it's been aged to perfection!

 Heidi wanted the mirror to look old too, so I googled "Acid Mirror" just to see what I could find.  What do you know but another blogger from St. George, Utah  has some amazing mirrors she's done and instructions on how to do them!  Thanks Mandy @ Vintage Revivals! She's even been on the Nate Berkus Show with her mirrors!  You go girl!

 After I took the above pictures I decided to make the hooks look "rusty".  I think it's the perfect final touch!

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Lonely Red Chair

For Sale $30

The magic of spray primer

The one thing I would tell people about refishing furniture is that they don't need to strip & sand everything.  This is something I learned the hard way, and it's still tempting for me sometimes.  I have the perfect example with this table. 

 I took this picture after I had sanded a little...just to get the varnish that was curling.  As you can see, it's a mess!  In the old days I would have used stripper or sanded until my arm was about to fall off.  Now, I just use Kilz original spray primer.  It is amazing!  I refinished this table set from start to finish in ONE day.  Here's how she turned out...

I once had a table like this that I got rid of because I was tired of oak.  Oh, how I wish I had know about spraypaint!

This is a little side cabinet, painted to match the table.

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A refinish gone wrong!!! (And then right)

Not that I don't have plenty of mess ups, but this one came to me in this condition.  Someone decided these sunflowers would make beautiful pulls and also decided to brush on white paint in a VERY messy & drippy fashion.  Then end result was, well, a mess!!!

A little lesson I've learned is that I don't have to completely strip the gobby paint on a piece of furnture.  It takes HOURS and I HATE using stripper.  So, I sanded down all the blobs, and used my Krylon spray primer.  It makes it look so smooth and you would never know there are a few layers of paint underneath. 

Here is the end result!

Painted in my favorite red with a black glaze to show off all the details and curves on this dresser!

Didn't it turn out pretty?  And I refinished it in a day thanks to some amazing primer!