Second hand chest of drawers (Upholstery Friday)

This weekend's furniture revamp project is to turn this second hand chest of drawers into a lovable piece again - we picked it up on the curb outside of our flat a few months ago. The kids who used to own it must have grown up! It doesn't show on the photos but on the side it was full of stickers.

 These were taken after we have sanded down the thing,
it used to be the same colour as the feet.

Other than painting a school playhouse for charity, I have never painted any furniture before. After a bit of research, I wrote a shopping list and went to Wickes to stock up on the essentials (Post on Oscar's day trip to the hardware store):

• Fine sand paper - a mask is also recommended for sanding
• Good quality paint brushes - I bought a 75mm (3") and a 18mm (3/4") for the fiddly areas
• Masking tape (to cover the areas you don't want to paint)
• Wood/Multi purpose/Universal primer in white - Anti-corrosive and water based (dries quicker and easier to clean the brushes afterwards)
• Paint for wood - the colour I chose was Eggshell Pistachio (this is a solvent based paint so needed some white spirit to wash the brushes afterwards) 
• Beeswax for wood - Natural colour
• Lint free cloth - for applying the Beeswax and pollishing the surface

We completed the project in a weekend, removing the bl**dy stickers, sanding the paint off and applying the primer on the first day, it only took about 2 hours for the water based primer to dry. The hardest parts were the handles, as they have been stuck to the drawers instead of screwed on we couldn't take them off. We primed and painted them carefully but still needed to sand bits around the handles to clean them afterwards.

On the second day, it was a really hot and sunny day, so probably didn't help the solvent based paint dry, after 6hrs it was still a little bit sticky. Initially I wanted to stick mirror sheets on the drawers, but because of the difficulties with the handles, I have decided to keep them bare as the wood grain doesn't look as worn off on the drawers. I just used beeswax along the grain to give it a polish the wood.
 

Sticky paint drying in the hot sunny day

 

Scratched

My first SLR was a Pentax P30 (35mm film), it was "lended" to me by a very generous colleague two years ago and it's still sitting proudly in my cupboard. I have since bought a digital SLR but I still prefer shotting in film - you never know what you'll get until the films are developed. When I took this photo, it was my second roll of film, aperture, exposure, shutter speeds...blah blah meant nothing to me, after I pressed the shutter and attempted to wind up the film, it was a bit jammed so I thought the whole roll was ruined but all the photos turned out fine. Of course what I did was half winded the film up and then scratched it....