DIY Wooden Chest Makeover

Hey guys,

Today's post is going to be a little different than normal because it's actually a DIY/ furniture makeover. My sister had this chest that she has had for years (and by years I mean like 10 plus years). It's made of real would which can be hard to find nowadays and when you do, it's totally over priced.

Before she started college, my sister and her best friend (also college dorm roommate) decided to paint the whole thing black and splatter different colors of pink all over it to go with the theme of their dorm room. At the time, we all thought it looked really good and turned out great. However, after redoing it, we have no idea what she was thinking or why our mom let her do it. It took us forever to completely redo it and the main reason why was because we had to remove all of the paint with a paint striper and then sand off the remaining paint.

I thought it was going to be finished in one weekend but unfortunately that was not the case. I started the project back in July and we didn't finish it until Wednesday September 14th. It didn't really take us all those months to work on it but it did take a while. I started working on it back in July when we were in our rental still and I was able to remove most of the paint from the drawers. But life happened and I had to put the project on hold and we picked it back up after moved back in with our parent's. We started the project on a Friday worked on it on Saturday and Sunday, skipped Monday, and then I finished it up on Tuesday and Wednesday.

This picture below is what it looked like before, when it was inside our rental. We use it as a coffee bar. We will still continue to use it as a coffee bar in our new house but we have some other plans for it as well which I will show you guys when we get it all set up.

This is what the drawers looked like with the paint striper on them. The paint striper is supposed to sit for about 15-20 minutes to do is it's thing and then you can use a plastic scraper to remove the paint.

This is what the drawers looked like after applying one coat of the paint striper. It definitely removed a lot of the paint but as you can tell there is still quite a lot of paint leftover. 

This is what the drawers looked like after a second coat of the paint striper and this was the last coat that I did until after we moved out of our rental and we picked up working on it again at our parent's house.

This is a picture of the door and the shelf that goes inside the chest before we did any paint striping or sanding.

This is a picture that my sister took of the top of the chest with the paint striper on it. As you can see, the paint striper kind of makes the old paint change colors, (small purple section) it also bubbles up, and then eventually you can kind of see the paint lifting up some.

Below is a picture of the shelf, the pre-stain wood conditioner that we used, and the stain. We used the shelf as a tester piece just so we could see what the stain was going to look. None of us had ever used a colored wood stain before so this was a new experience for us. I definitely recommend choosing a colored stain if you are bored with your typical wood stains. It makes life a little more colorful and exciting!

Here is one of the drawers before we stained it. We ended up doing a third coat of paint striper just so we could try and remove as much paint as possible before sanding. Then we sanded it, cleaned it, conditioned it, and then stained it.

This is what the chest looked like after being completely sanded and before the first coat of stain was applied.

The next two photos were taken after the first coat of stain was applied.

This is what the chest looks now, after adding a second coat of the stain, re-attaching the door, and adding all of the knobs. I love the way it turned out and I can't wait to put it inside the new house and set it all up!

Here is a picture of the knobs we chose. We found them at Hobby Lobby! And if you haven't been to a Hobby Lobby, you have to go, like right now! They are amazing and there is something for everyone at them. 

We found all of our supplies at Lowe's but I am pretty sure that Home Depot or other local home improvement stores sell the same products. The stain and conditioner we used were both by Minwax and the paint striper we used was by Formby's (Formby's Paint & Poly Remover). The way the stain works is, you find the can in the wood stain section, take it to the paint counter and tell them which color you would like it to be. We chose True Blue and I absolutely love the color and want to stain everything in sight that color (haha). We stained the whole thing with one full coat and then applied a second coat, waited about 3 minutes and then wiped off the top layer of that coat. We did not follow the directions completely but that's mostly because we've worked with other stains before so I didn't see the point in completely reading the instructions (haha).

The paint striper stings really bad if you get it on your skin so I highly recommend wearing long sleeves, pants, socks and gloves. That's not what we did and we learned from our mistake (haha). I also recommend wearing masks and eye protection when sanding like everyone says to do because the stuff really does go everywhere including your lungs. I also recommend making sure that you have or buy rags that can get ruined because they will, trust me. They also come in handy if you happen to get something on your hands and need to wipe it off such as the annoying paint striper or the stain.

We have a couple more furniture makeovers planned before we move into our new house so I will definitely be sharing those with you guys! I hope you guys enjoyed this type of post and check back in the next month or two for more DIY's.

Thanks for stopping by!

Feel free to leave a comment or share this with your friends!

XO, Steph

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