Restoring and Refinishing a Five Drawer Dresser PT. 1

My wife and I inherited this five drawer dresser from her grandparents.  It’s a great old dresser.  The current finish has about four or five coats of paint on top of stain.  You ask how I know that it has stain under all those layers of paint, I know because I took a belt sander to the top when we first got it to the house.  I quickly realized what I already knew you don’t take a sander to a restoration project that has paint all over and OLD paint at that.  Not only did I have a ton of dust, it was one of the worst smells.  A combination of a musty sock drawer and that funk you get after about an hour on the treadmill. 

Using a Kreg Pocket Hole Jig to create a simple picture frame

I finally got some time in the shop tonight to build this simple frame to show the basics of using a Kreg Pocket Hole Jig. 

I was joined tonight by my shop helper.

You will notice that I do practice my safety precautions in the shop even for the shop helper.  He knows that if he is out there he has to wear his headphones and his Safety glasses.

 

Okay back to the purpose of the this blog….

I have a slightly older model than is currently available.  As far as I can tell the biggest difference is the case that everything comes in.

 

It looks like a piece is missing however it isn’t.  It’s the grey disc that sits on top of the jig for the clamp to attach to.  It just easier for me to keep it attached instead of a constant on and off.

Wow this week flew by

Sorry everyone.. It's been one of those weeks where time just seems to fly by.....  I promise I am still going to get to the Kreg tool demo and the stain story board.  I will do one of the two tonight or both and get them posted as soon as possible.

Shop Safety: The Top 3 things I consider key

Safety is the name of the game when it comes to working with power tools and wood.  I can’t stress enough how important this part of woodworking is.  Things can go wrong way to fast.  In just the few years that I have been active in the woodworking hobby I have already know several people to have had accidents.  It seems the most common injury so far is has been a finger hitting a table saw blade.  This can lead to a very severe injury.  I will just leave it at that.  When you talk about shop safety you can go in many directions.  I am not going to talk about tool safety at this time.  I am going to focus on a few things that don’t always seem to get a lot of press. 

Bedroom Makeover: Nightstand Edition

So it is now time to make over our bedroom.  It’s still in the drab white that was painted with the house built.  In an effort to maximize our dollars we decided to give our current bedroom suit a make over.  There are several things wrong with it all of which I will fix over time but the first thing that hits you is it’s just plain ugly.  We still haven’t totally figured out why we bought it 10 years ago.  I guess we were young it was in our budget and we needed furniture for the house we had just moved into.  That being said how do you take a 10 year old not so good looking night stand and bring it into the new decade.  Let’s explore this in a little pictorial.

The ugly nightstand

I guess really it’s not all that bad but it is far from our current taste in furniture and design.  I have some ideas on how I would like to fix this guy.  The first thing that needs to happen is that I need to remove all that molding next to the drawers.  I just think it really disrupts the look of the nightstand.  So what to do…..   Find one chisel well two actually and one hammer and presto you get the following result.