Tuesday, June 23, 2015

Restoring & Painting a Vintage Table

I sometimes am surprised by how dried out old timber furniture is. Does anybody take care of their furniture anymore? In a way, it's all the better for me as I'm able to buy furniture more affordably to fix up and pass on to you lovely people.


This old timber table was particularly dry but solid and a lovely shape. I had a customer who had been asking for a small table to use as a craft table and I thought this would be perfect. I told her my vision for the piece and asked if she'd like first option to buy it. I wanted a beautiful peacock blue on the base to contrast with what I knew would turn out to be lovely warm timber on the top. Nicola thought that sounded fantastic and perfect for her colourful home.

I cleaned off the cobwebs and even the obligatory chewing gum stuck underneath. It always makes me gag a little. I can't even guess how many years it had been there for. I then flipped the table upside down and sanded the legs and apron smooth and started painting. For this project I mixed AASCP Aubusson Blue and Provence and added a little bright turquoise acrylic paint I had on hand from another furniture painting project. Once I had applied two coats of paint and it had dried I sanded smooth and applied hemp oil to give it all a lovely sheen and to protect the paint.  I then turned my attention to the top.


The top needed a lot of sanding to remove the old varnish and smooth out the timber grain.  You can see above it is quite patchy. I wanted to remove every single last piece of that old orange varnish and get down to the raw timber.  I have a lot of blog posts on sanding timber so you might like to read a couple of them here and here. Once the timber was completely raw and perfectly smooth I applied a good coat of ASCP Clear wax and buffed it up to a silky finish.  The good thing about not varnish this table is that it can always be easily refinished - just a quick sand and apply more wax will keep it looking beautiful.



Look at that sheen on those lovely legs.  A little table all ready for a new life and one very happy customer.

Sanding and oiling/waxing (FEEDING) is such a good way to refresh your timber. These old beauties get very thirsty.  Just like us old beauties :) 

Fiona  xx


sharing at 
www.missmustardseed.com
www.frenchcountrycottage.net

4 comments:

  1. I have been wanting to try refinishing the top and painting the legs - now I am on the hunt to find a piece to try this - yours is lovely!

    ReplyDelete
  2. That looks lovely Fiona. I'm sure it'll be well used.

    Just wanted to say how much we all (I'm sure), appreciate all the effort you put into these posts. They really are very enjoyable to read, and so informative. It must be quite time consuming putting them together, and the result is always very good. Thanks for being such a generous spirit with the knowledge you've acquired through your hours (weeks, months, years!) of work. It is much appreciated.

    Have a really lovely day, Fiona.
    Cheers, Liz x

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. thanks so much Liz, that's lovely of you. glad to help xx

      Delete

Thanks for taking the time to comment! Sorry if you have trouble commenting, you can always email me at lilyfieldlife@bigpond.com