hello everybody Katie here from salvaged by K Scott today I'm bringing you along as I
refinish this antique wash stand that's a little bit of a family heirloom for my husband
this piece has definitely had a good well-loved life as a utilitarian piece of furniture it
used to be the nightstand between the bunk beds in the kids room at my husband's family
Cottage but his nana replaced it with something new about 10 years ago and Doug just couldn't
quite let this go since then it's been kicking around our house without much of a purpose
but it's finally time to shine it up it would have originally had a backsplash or more likely
a harp with a towel rod on this back lip but that is long gone and I'm not going to worry
about replacing it but I am going to be stripping all of this mess back to bare wood so that
I can restain it I can honestly say that I've never really paid much attention to this thing
and I kind of always assumed it was Maple but now that I'm looking at it up close I
can see that it's actually film Elm trees used to be very common and were used in a
ton of furniture but after a fungal infection spread by beetles knocked out most of the
tree population it's actually pretty hard to come by these days this stand was probably
made sometime at the beginning of the 20th century but this isn't its original finish
it's already being made over by a gdr in 1985 and if you look closely at the drawer you
can also see these ghost marks from the original Victorian style hardware this French provincial
stuff does not belong on here I'm gonna pull these off and I've already ordered some more
period appropriate replica pieces to replace them with Doug's only request for this is
that I leave all of the marks on the inside of the drawer it's where all the kids art
supplies used to live at the cottage so I won't be touching that at all
[Music] [Applause] [Music] thank you [Applause]
[Music] I started trying to get the screws out of these hinges but they're teeny tiny
slotted screws and they're stuck in there pretty well so instead of getting frustrated
with them right now and probably stripping them I'm just going to move on and I'll revisit
that later because I'm very well aware of just how much wax and furniture polish this
thing has seen I'm gonna wash it down with some simple green Degreaser and really hot
water before I start removing the finish so I don't end up grinding that stuff down into
the wood [Music] once the wood was dry I was ready to start working away at the old finish
I hooked up my orbital sander to the shop vac and then sorted through my mess of sanding
discs to find an 80 grit a 120 grit and a 180 grit I put on my respirator to catch any
dust that the vacuum doesn't get and started with the 80 grit to clean up the drawer [Music]
thank you [Music]
thank you [Music] next I moved over to the cabinet top this is a truly rustic piece of
furniture that's got a lot of wear and tear especially on the top here and I don't necessarily
want to get rid of all of that history it's definitely still gonna have some beauty marks
and even a lot of original Milling marks are on here but I do want to give it the smoothest
finish that I can
foreign
[Music] there's not too much I can do about the cigarette burn on the front edge without
creating a big divot in the wood so that's going to stay as it is and there are a few
other pretty good gouges but for the most part the wood cleaned up really nicely once
I had the finish and stain removed I switched out to my 120 grit and just started smoothing
out the wood again then it was just a matter of working my way around the whole wash stand
using the 80 and 120 grit abrasives and I also busted out my carbide scraper to help
me cut through any thicker spots of the poly finish even faster wherever I could fit it
I did as much as I could with my five inch orbital sander just because it cuts through
the Finish super fast but on the insides of these shaker style panels I switched out to
my smaller 3x4 rectangular sander this job of getting into Corners could be done quite
nicely with a triangle Mouse sander as well if that's what you've got at this point I
couldn't really avoid the doors any longer I needed to get them off so I could finish
sanding them properly and also clean up the inside of the frame so I grabbed a smaller
flathead screwdriver and my hammer sometimes sometimes when screws are being a bit stubborn
you can get a bit better of a grip on them if you tap the screwdriver into the head of
the screw a little bit and then use all of the pressure that you can muster to press
it in while you're turning the screw after about half an hour of struggling I did manage
to successfully remove two of the 12 screws and then I had to tap in my tool maker husband
for help dog
I need your help with these screws please
he unscrewed a few more and then ended up having to drill out two of the screws that
just wouldn't budge but we did eventually get the doors off of the cabinet and the hinges
off of the doors then I could move on [Music] I finished sanding the doors and then used
my detail sander to get whatever else I could before moving on to hand sanding the smallest
stuff with the help of this little foam gripper and even a paintbrush handle
[Music]
[Music] thank you
[Music] once everything had been sanded with the medium 120 I moved up to the finest grit
that I wanted to use on this piece which was my 180 for the finished sand and I did all
of that by hand mechanical Sanders no matter how good they are will usually leave behind
those little curly cues swirl marks in the wood not pressing down on the sander can reduce
them a lot but to make sure that I don't get any of them in my final finish I've learned
to do my last Sand by hand I vacuumed up a bunch of the dust that I'd made and then wiped
everything down with a microfiber cloth and some mineral spirits to pick up the rest and
while that dried I pulled out the stain colors that I had on hand and did some little test
swatches on the back of the stand to see what they looked like on here
foreign
[Music] before I stained I applied a coat of pre-stained wood conditioner to help the
penetrating wood stain go on a little more evenly and once that had dried for about 30
minutes I rubbed on a coat of minwax's special Walnut I like to rub it into the wood first
and then when I go back to wipe up the excess I always follow the direction of the grain
[Music] thank you [Music]
[Music] as that was drying I didn't really love the kind of green undertone that it was
giving the wood it was close to what we wanted but not quite right so I let the special Walnut
dry for a few hours and then applied a second coat using their English chestnut color which
has a little bit more of a red tint in it [Music]
thank you [Music]
[Music] thank you
I decided to seal the table up with some wipe on polyurethane it's really forgiving and
easy to use and leaves a beautiful soft sheen on the wood I used a dark t-shirt rag to apply
this so I didn't accidentally end up with any white fluffies in my top coat and I wiped
on three coats and gave each one just a really light smooth out with some 600 grit in between
foreign
[Music]
the last thing I needed to do was reattach the doors and install the new hardware but
I was not interested in messing around with those flat head screws again so I popped out
to the hardware store and picked up some little Robertson ones instead
[Music]
thank you [Music]
these new polls that I found online are more appropriate to the age of the piece and I
really like The Rustic cast metal look that they have the polls did come with screws though
to attach them and since I've already got holes in here I rifled through my box of bits
and Bobs to find some machine screws and nuts that I could use to install them with instead
I was even lucky enough to find four of them the same and in a pretty similar color to
The Cup Pools too foreign [Music] here's one more look at the wash stand that I started
with and this is what it looks like all spruced up well not all the way spruced up it's still
got a ton of its antique charm with some good dents in the top and that cigarette burn of
course it's still filled with childhood memories of giggling cousins jumping from bunk to Bunk
with their flashlights long after bedtime but now it's ready to take on yet another
generation full of stories make sure you're subscribed for tens more furniture makeovers
leave me a comment and let me know your thoughts on this one and I will catch you all next
time foreign [Music]