Saturday morning came and we were up & out of the apartment by 9:30am ready to tackle our projects! My father-in-law Mark kindly lent us the use of his garage and equipment for the weekend as otherwise there would not have been any way us to do all this work. And being the novice that I am at both blogging and diy projects, I forgot to take ‘before’ photos so below is a random collection of nearly completed, and in the case of the bench, completed projects!
The bench was the easiest project to complete – a bit of light sanding with the electric sander and 2 coats of outdoor stain et violà – a new bench! We’re quite pleased with how it turned out and it now coordinates with our little teak table & chairs that also find their home on our deck. The second project that Mike diligently and painfully worked on on Saturday was the sanding/grinding down of the previous layers of paint on the cast iron bed frame. Typically you can spray paint directly on to previous layers of paint, however, there were a number of deep nicks and scratches covering the frame so we smoothed it out as much as we could and on Sunday Mike went to town with the white satin finish spray paint and the bed frame turned out really great! Now, for the last project and the one that was the most time consuming and in the end turned out completely the opposite from my original plan! The table and chairs! I wish I had remembered to bring my camera with me to the garage on Saturday but as I forgot it this lengthy description will have to substitute.
In the course of THREE hours I managed to sand only ONE chair! 1 chair in 3 hours! Why? Well, the manufacturer of this table set had coated the whole thing in very durable sealant. And in order to apply wood stain, the stain must be applied directly to wood…so obvious yet so difficult to achieve! Once that labourious task was finished, I began staining the chair I had so carefully sanded…well, there were nearly tears…as I was applying the stain, very noticeable blotches started appearing on the seat and the stain colour itself was making the chairs look like they belonged at some run down country/western themed family restaurant! It turns out that the blotches were the result of wood glue that had likely been split on the chair during its assembly – awesome! The new stain colour was too dark to sand down so after some contemplation on Saturday night, we decided to spray paint the table & chairs the same white satin as the bed frame. It has not yielded nearly the same look I was hoping to achieve (aged, dark wood table) but it will make the table look like new and should brighten the apartment up.
On Sunday we spent another several hours in the near 30C/85+ F heat spray painting our hearts out! And I have to say we did a great job on the whole! The bed looks great and the table and chairs look fresh and new. Below are a few of the pictures I took on Sunday, when I remembered to bring my camera! More to follow with the final products!
The newly stained bench!
The table before we went crazy with the spray paint
The table nearly done!
Here's a shot of the foot board and 3 of the chairs.
Great work you two! Can't wait to see pics of the bed set up in your guest room.
ReplyDeleteI'm really digging the bench as well - is that on your balcony? If so, make sure to enjoy a few G&Ts outside while you try and cool off....Keep cool and carry on! :)