Refinished Night Stand a Craigslist Find

This is one of my latest Craigs list finds.  It was down in Sylva, NC which was a little bit of a haul from my house. About an hour but that is OK because it was a beautiful drive AND I hit a few Goodwill's along the way.

I am starting to see a pattern in a lot of the furniture that I have been picking up. Burn marks. Cigarette burn marks. Some of them are worse than others and it only is a problem is if the top is a veneer. With a veneer you can only sand but so much. Over sanding of a veneer will thin the top layer of wood too much and you will see the glue that is used to adhere the veneer to the top of the piece of furniture. If this happens no amount of stain will cover it up. You will see the glue through the stain.

This piece of furniture was stamped fruitwood on the back.

The sides of the stand are also a thin veneer.

I just really liked the curves of this piece and it appeared to be fairly well made, solid. It was also in fairly good condition. Not a lot of scratches.

I stripped it down with stripper to minimize the amount of sanding on the top. The front is solid wood. I used steel wool to get into the edges but intentionally left a little of the original stain. Where you can see this is on the top drawer left side.  If you do not completely remove all of the original stain the furniture will not accept the new stain.

I stained this piece with a Minwax Mahogany stain. I decided to go darker because if I had used a lighter stain it would have looked a lot like the original finish. It would have also shown the variations in the wood of the drawers.  I liked the idea of the dark stain with the shades of the old stain underneath. giving it a distressed  or a rubbed finish.

I used the original hardware. Scrubbed them with a wire brush to get the crud off and shine them up a little.

The plan was to put it in Sam's room but I am liking it a lot in the family room. This means I need to keep looking for a nightstand for Sam. Oh darn.

Not too bad for a $40.00 purchase.