Refinish (again)…

It’s been a while…I was out of the country for a while, then it got cold…and now it’s getting warm again, and I have a few things in the hopper.   I am on a “distressed” vein as of late…

Before:

After:

The tables started off as normal course Room & Board parsons tables some years ago.   After years of use, and years of me developing what I think it no longer off the rack taste (no offense to R&B, they make great stuff, just often lacking in that extra little something something that makes it “real”), I reworked the tables.    Your humble author was at the time lacking in so many skills, among them a keen understanding of the merits of chemical stripping agent (use Zipp Strip people, there is no “green” alternative when you are using a chemical to eat away plastic coatings).    Refinishing part one involved an orbital sander and some medium brown stain.  The result was better than what was there, but the orbital sander left some marks…it wasn’t perfect.     Fast forward to last week.   The tables have been in a closet, acting as make-shift shelves.     As part of my annual February “I need to get rid of stuff” freak out, I came to grips with the need to move the tables on to another owner.   Luckily they are staying in the family…but they needed a rebirth.   As with the table I did last June, I used a number of tools to create the look off well used wood.  

The lesson learned from this project is that you cannot expect to be able to fully duplicate results when you are just a guy in a workshop.   In this case, the pine had been stained some years ago.   Where I lacked skill in removing the old finish, I am damn good with stain (it would seem).   I had hoped to add a much deeper tone by using a very dark stain.    The wood seems to have been well saturated a few years ago as it didn’t take the new stain, expect in the newly distressed marks.    The result is something different, and pretty cool – the tables look like old distressed brown leather.   

The results, while not as expected, are pretty damn cool.   The tables that started out off the rack “modern” (read – blah), made a pit stop in purgatory, and ended up as something different.   Where as the metal legs were almost the feature against the boring tops years ago, now the wood is the prominent feature and the legs have become the utility structural elements they should be.   As with all of my projects, please feel free to contact me if you have specific questions.   There are not for sale, but I would be interested in reproducing (or trying as it were) them for you.