Way back when Barb and I got married, we bought a cherry wood armoires that we got at half off at a custom naked furniture shop. We used it for an entertainment center for about 8 years. It followed us to 4 houses.
All that moving took a toll and the top got separated from the bottom. So, I did some repairs to stabilize it. Meanwhile, my son-in-law tells us he has a bunch of junk in his storage unit that he wants to get rid of. Barb and I take the 50 mile trip to check it out. What I found was a 50 year old buffet. It wasn’t in bad shape, but needed some lovin’.
It was stained. No, I mean actually had big nasty stains in the stain. The mirror’s silver was so bad the corners were not reflective at all. What to do with it?
We learned a lot from this project. One was we probably wont do chalk paint again. It marks up too easily and doesn’t cover those nasty stains well at all and is very expensive.
Anyhow, I took the drawers out and the doors and top off. But, when we looked at it’s sad nakedness, it looked really good with out the doors and drawers. So, we decided to go with it like that. Well, the top would stay.
It took me about 4 days of sanding when I got home from work just to get past the wood stain. The top was a completely different story. As I was removing all the gunk, I noticed that the wood had a weird looking grain to it. I found out it was quarter cut tiger wood: 3 boards laminated together. The bridge that contained the mirror was just toast. I probably could have saved it if I had more experience, but decided to trash it since we were going to use it as a replacement for the old armoires anyway.
I guess over the years, with all the previous sanding, painting, sanding, staining, spilling gunk on it, time took its toll on the laminated joints. As I was sanding the top one of the joints broke completely through.
There were no biscuit joints. No dove tails. Nothing, just glue. I whipped out my trusty Kreg Jig and put about 10 screws on the underside after lining things up, I connected those pieces back together. But again, not having much experience, and after much Elmer’s wood glue, Kreg Jig screws, and pipe clamps, I flipped the unit back over to my dismay the boards were warped. So, I spent the better part of 3 hours smoothing the top out between the joints.
Next was the chalk paint. Notice I don’t mention any brand names of chalk paint here. That is because I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemies. It is labor intensive and just plain expensive. Even with 2 different primers, the stains kept coming through. It took 2 coats of Kilz and 3 coats of Zinser, and 3 coats of the chalk paint to finally cover it up.
The bottom space was a long or rather wide drawer that was falling a part and was just a pain to try to open. So, I cut a piece of 1/4″ cabinet grade plywood and tacked it down with brads, but not before doing the chalk paint dance prior to installing.
Over all I think it came out real nice for my first project in the “new” house.
