refinish – A Smith of All Trades

Mid-Century Modern Cabinet

January 12, 2015January 11, 2015 Jessica Smith

I didn’t go to enough yard sales last year — New Year’s Resolution to go to more this spring and summer! I find the best things when I go yard saling, like this mid-century modern cabinet I scored a few years back for $10.

It’s sat untouched in our family room for years until I got around to sprucing it up.

While it’s a little hard to tell in the first photo, the piece was all scratched up.

Scratches on the top:

Another shot of the top:

And scratches on the door:

I cleaned up the piece with soap and water before using my trusty Restor-A-Finish to touch up the scratches.

To us the product, I simply put it on a paper towel and rub it into the cracks and all over the cabinet. Let it sit for about 20 minutes, then wipe the whole piece down. To finish, wax the piece using the same technique.

It goes from looking like this ^^ to this:

The scratches are still in the top, but are far less noticeable.

It really cleans the whole thing up!

Now the piece looks great in our house. I still can’t believe I score it for only $10. What a deal.

Christmas, Craft Projects, DIY GIFT GUIDE, Gift Idea, Holiday, Pallet Projects, Quick and Easy Crafts

Wood Burning and Wooden Ornaments

January 8, 2015January 2, 2015 Jessica Smith

My last holiday craft involving pallet wood also involved a new skill — wood burning!! I’d never successfully tried wood burning before, but I figured out what I’d been doing wrong and had a blast playing around with the new technique.

Before I got into the wood burning, I simply was making trees from the pallet wood. The first I made was a gift for my secret santa at work:

I cut out the tree using my jigsaw, sanded it down, added a hole for the ribbon and colored the wood using the restor-a-finish product I always rave about. Cute, yes? My coworker loved it. I also gave him a Home Depot gift card — he and I love to chat about our ongoing projects. He’s my Home Depot buddy!

I made a similar tree for my godmother, but to girl it up a bit I painted gold dots all over it to look like ornaments.

Then I moved on to some simple wood burned ornaments. I tried it out on some scrap wood first:

After doing some research online, I learned that you can use a soldering iron as a wood burning tool. The only downside is the lack of interchangeable tips. I’d tried this before, but it turns out I didn’t let my iron get hot enough. This time I let it fully warm up — and that did the trick.

Once I’d tested it out on a few pieces of scrap wood, I started to make gifts for people. An “E” for the neighbors, an “S” for my mother-in-law and an “M” and “E” for Max and Eli, my friend’s sons.

Let me back track for a sec — all of these are from scrap wood, which I liked a lot because pretty much none of my pallet went to waste. I sanded everything down before burning it.

OK, back to the burning… once I got designs I liked, I added holes for ribbon or wire. Some I stained, some I left natural.

My buddy Maz really liked his little “M.” OK, he obviously couldn’t care less about it… I just wanted to share our selfie 🙂

The letters I did were fairly easy (Minus the “S”) because they were all straight lines. Since my soldering iron was a longer flat tip, that was the only shape I could do. Lots of dashes, exes and straight lines.

I got the idea to use those shapes to make wood-burned Christmas tree ornaments. These were my favorite.

If you smell them, they smell like campfire! LOVE.

I gave my sister and her BF the larger ornament with the star. The other I selfishly kept for us. I added a lumberjack-esque ribbon to it, too.

How adorable is that? It it cost me $0! The wood was scrap, the wire I add and the ribbon came off of a gift 🙂

I love to make Christmas gifts and I think these were some of my favorites that I made this year.

Furniture

Refreshed Grain Bin

November 24, 2014November 23, 2014 Jessica Smith

I bought an old grain bin this spring that’s been moved from wall to wall until it found its home in my dining room. It’s lived in the dining room for months now, in its grungy, dirty state until I got tired of the grime and fixed it up this weekend.

You can see in this photo below the grain bin in its original state on the day I brought it home. It had a white knob and was all scratched up.

I took off the white knob, which was only drilled partially into the front of the grain bin. It was a pain in the bttt to remove, but I needed to do that before I could clean around it — it was oddly grimy. Yuck.

I took a few more photos of the piece before getting started on the refinishing. Here’s the beat up top — probably the worst part of the grain bin.

The front panel of the top of the bin was super scratched, too.

Since the wood was in super rough face and didn’t look like it ever had much of a stain on it, I was doubtful that my go-to Restor-A-Finish would work. But lo and behold, this might be the best use of the refinishing product yet. To use Restor-A-Finish, simply dab it on a paper towel and rub it on your piece. Let is sit for 20 minutes, then wipe any excess off.

The grain bin was thirstyyyyy, so there wasn’t too much of the finish to wipe off.

Notice any of the scratches or discoloration before?

Nope! Buh bye scratches!

And hello beautiful, shiny top. I mean, seriously, can you believe the difference?

All I needed to do at this point was add a knob back on the front. I grabbed my drill to make a hole through the front panel, then attached an antique0looking crystal knob.

So charming. Check out the whole thing:

I bought the grain bin on a whim — basically I just had to buy something at the Barn Sale I went to back in April. Now that it is freshened up, I love this impulse buy and think it totally belongs. It acts as such a nice mini-buffet in the dining room. We usually have our fruit bowl here, but my three apples looked sad and lonely.

Did I mention we store all of our outdoor equipment in it? Volleyballs, badminton racquets…. all sorts of fun stuff. What… don’t you store that sorta thing in your dining room?

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