Monday, August 23, 2010

The Furniture is DONE :)

Last August, just after I moved into our house on Bethel and before Kyle moved to his apartment in Muncie (this was before we got married), my mom took both of us to look at some bedroom furniture she found on Craigslist for a mere $80.

The guy who was selling the furniture was some sort of collector and also loved to "dabble" in refinishing furniture.  He looked like he was about halfway through with our set, but decided to sell the extra set before he and his family moved to New York.  No biggie.

So we didn't like what he was doing to the furniture (it's real wood, people, and he decided to stain it BLACK.  That's not normal, right?), but my mom bought it for us as kind of a housewarming gift and we put it in the garage to be worked on and refinished.  We'd just helped remodel a house, so we were totally up for the task.

Oh.  My.  Gosh.  I'm not sure that it was the biggest mistake we'd ever made as a couple (because it's done now), but it MIGHT be the biggest headache we've given ourself yet as a couple!  The furniture needed a LOT of TLC and because of our school schedules and work hours we just couldn't give as much attention as we would have liked to our furniture.  So, sad to say, but the bedroom set sat in the garage until June.  It was a guilty reminder every time we got in to use our bikes of all the work we had in front of us.  And, I'll admit, it was a lot easier to just shut the garage door and ignore it.  

But we got tired of sleeping on a mattress on the floor.  Then, we got tired of the little rickety Menards bedframe.  We got tired of the plastic tote drawers as dressers.  We decided that after my summer classes were done, we'd tackle the bedroom furniture.

It took AGES (seriously, like almost two months of working on it about 10 hours a week!).  We had to put on this gloopy chemical to take off any paint and thick stain, then we had to strip the rest of the stain (which was a total mess and what took the longest).  Then we had to use stripper wash to clean off the chemicals from the previous steps before conditioning the wood.  After that, we applied two coats of stain to everything.  Here's where parts got tricky...we had to redo the headboard THREE TIMES because the stain either wouldn't spread, was almost black (growing trend), or didn't match the already finished pieces.  We also had to redo a few drawers as well.  When this happened, we had to repeat all steps to now, and that was quite a task.  

Finally, when things were just right (we had to give Kyle's dresser a third coat of stain and rough up a perfectly good nightstand to give it more stain so that everything would match), we glossed it all to make it shiny.  Last, we fixed a drawer, put on new (and expensive!) handles and knobs, cleaned the drawers up, and put the mirrors back in their frames.  

Would you like to see the finished project?!



Please notice the awesome comforter and pillow set!   That was a gift from Kyle's Aunt Joanie and cousin Dani for my bridal shower.  That was last August, too!  I told Kyle we weren't gonna use it til the furniture was done, so now it's like I have a whole new room!

 I feel so short in my bedroom now...all this furniture is MASSIVE.




Don't laugh, we need new lamps :(  I was also thinking maybe like a sort of woven basket hamper (we can't fit ours in the closet really anymore) or a little chair there in the corner?  I'm so excited to DECORATE!

I feel like such a big kid now.  And you better believe we slept well last night :)  

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