I have finally completed refinishing the cabinet in the guest bathroom, a major hurdle to me finally having an open house. It has been a 5 month process (mostly because of my putting off the final steps because I dreaded the work), however, it is now finished.
Here are some of the process photos:
The initial stripping was pretty exciting. Aside from the noxious smell, the paint started to bubble and peel right off.
Piece of Cake!
Oh yeah, this is going to be easy…
Here are the doors and drawers removed. The initial layer (which turned out to actually be several layers) of paint scraped right off. It turns out however there was a base layer which appeared to be oil based and would not come off like the previous. Instead of stripping, it only softened into a white goo which just smeared every time I tried to scrape if off. So, I wound up stripping everything about three times which left the wood down to sort of milkwash or pickled look where the white paint had left the top surface of the wood a hazy white.
You can start to see the “white goo” effect happening here. All the orange is the stripping material. The stripping process was applied to both the cabinet and the doors about three times and followed by rigorous sanding, which actually busted the little mouse sander I was using (sorry Dad).
Here is the cabinet stripped. Although the top was cleaned off, the cabinet remained in this condition for several months as I had gotten tied up with stuff going on in the summer. Also, with the “fun” I was having stripping it down and knowing there was still a lot more sanding involved, I was not entirely anxious to get back to it.
I finally broke down and purchased a new sander and proceeded to finish the work I had left un-finished. After giving everything a good sanding, I applied the first coat of stain. Unfortunately, the old white oil paint had penetrated deeper into the wood surface than I could tell, and it left a blotchy appearance to the stain.
This just would not fly!
So, out came the sander and everything was re-sanded yet again! I was really just wanting to get this finished at this point but my perfectionist nature would not let me quit until it was correct.
Ok, so here is the base coat of stain applied again. This time, it takes much more evenly and looks a lot better finally. We are finally getting the desired results here.
The doors and drawers get their costing of stain.
Ah… finally installing hardware!!
Everything is given 2 coats of polyurethane to give it a low sheen.
Here is the finished cabinet. A far cry better from the previous lilac quadruple coated, flowery-knobbed cabinets I started out with.
Now to do something with the sky blue walls, aquamarine door and the swans on the shower stall…
My name is Derick. I am a Landscape Architectural Designer in Orlando Florida. During the process of purchasing my first home, I had run across a series of websites of people who had purchased a ranch house built during the 1950's-60's and had created a running blog journal to track their progress. Since I have always been particularly fond of the design styles of that era and with a modest mortgage budget in Central Florida, a mid century ranch house was in my future. This blog has been created to serve as an online construction journal to document the future renovation and restoration of the house, post research and findings on the architecture and styles of mid-century design, share inspirational ideas, etc… 
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