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....

 

Pimp my sofa

This is the lovely sofabed that has served us and our guests well for the last 4 years. That's why eventhough the duck down back cushions are not holding shape anymore, we're not going to give it up just yet (and that would be so wasteful!). It's getting a bit annoying though, the feathers in the custhions shift all the time so I have to puff and reposition them everytime I want to sit down. Luckily, I trawled through the web and found this upholstery method called "Mock Tufting". (Initially I wanted a button tufted look but soon realised that it's not easy to achieve without paying someone to professionally upholster them - qouted at £30 per cushion in case anyone fancy getting theirs done).

Voilà! It took me about 2 hours to mock tuft the cushions and they look much neater now, don't they? I am quite pleased with the finishing products, especially when it means I don't have to fiddle with the cushions everytime I want to sit down now!

You will need some upholstery needles and thick thread - I used an 8 inches long needle with threads we used to make friendship bracelets with. Also measure and mark the cushions where you want to sew in the "tuft". For this task, lazyniss doesn't pay well as I learn the long way (thought after measuring and doing my first cushion I can "feel" my way around the second one. But the tufts didn't align and had to take them out and re-start the damn thing) :p

Next, the futon inside the sofabed needs changing, it's sagging a bit and you can feel the mesh underneath holding it all together. But a cheap double futon on ebay is at least £100, I wonder if there's another trick that I can find to sort out the old one instead...?