Mid century modern set

Well Im slowly working my way through my stash of mid century pieces and the garage is starting to exhale again as the stress of containing everything alleviates.  Another problem is arising though - Im accumulating a surplus of dresser mirrors again. Doh!

It was love at first sight with this piece, and worth the one hour drive to pick her up.  She belonged to a lady who obviously loved her, because she was in very good condiiton.  The drawer facings and sides were all pretty great, only the top needed some TLC.

I set about sanding off the entire top.  Because there was not a heavy finish on it, it came off pretty well.  One problem I did encounter was I noticed the sandpaper on my orbital kept 'gumming' up very frequently.  Everytime this happened, the sanding slowed down noticeably and I would change to a fresh piece and it would come off effortlessly until it gummed up again.  So there you go, if you find that your finish is not sanding off well, than it could be because your sand paper is gumming on you.

I suspect the 'gummy' stuff was old furnture polish residue.  In the end I gave the entire top (all 78" of it) an overview sand to remove just the layer of gunge.  I then changed out the sandpaper (again) and the finish came off pretty well then.

I custom mixed up some stain to best try and match the rest of the piece.  I used gel stain.  It turned pretty good.  I then finished with a thick coat of Danish Tung Oil finish which really looks wonderful and matches the low sheen look of the rest of the piece.

These drawers are super-duper long, so the were catching a bit against the sides and each other, so I got the orbital out again and planed them a bit.

I cleaned up the rest of the dresser, and used gel stain to dab at some of the smaller blemishes.  I wanted to keep as much of the original finish as I could.

Next up were the nightstands.  Again, underneath a layer of mould, they were in awesome condition (apart from the tops again).

I used some retro material I picked up for $1 a metre at my favorite restore and lined the drawers.

I sanded back the tops only, and refinished them using the same steps as the long dresser.  The sand paper didn't gum up this time though, so I assume it didn't get the lavish furniture polish treatment that the main dresser did.

I really love this set with the long skinny drawers and the low look.  The credenza is only 27" tall. Very streamlined.

This is for sale on my ETSY shop

Midcentury Modern set In Gray

I picked up this set as an entire bedset for FREE off a kind gentleman who was moving out of province: 2 nightstands, tallboy and longboy.  Unfortunately the long boy was in such bad structural condition that I donated it to goodwill.  It was bowed and sagging in the middle and all the drawers banged into each other.  Too bad, because it was pretty cool looking.  I have worked on pieces before with bad bones, and it always drives me bonkers in the end. It drives Mr. Chuckles bonkers too as he is the one who ends up helping me fix them!

But alas, I rescued the other three pieces.  I went for deep charcoal as my base.  I knew I wanted to do a fun little detail, but I didn't have much time to get these guys done before I go away on holidays, so I needed to keep it simple.

 I love striping on MCM pieces, I think it really suits the trendiness of them and compliments their clean lines.  I was inspired by some pieces in blogland that had large and small stripes side-by-side.  I thought this looked cool, yet still pretty simple, so I opted for that.

 I custom mixed up the 'white' - it is actually pure white ASCP with a tiny bit of the charcoal grey mixed in, just to take the edge of the brilliance a bit.  I used painters tape to do the stripes, doing a coat of my base colour first (charcoal), and then doing two coats of the white (helps prevent bleed through to do the basecoat colour first).  Little tip for ya!

This set has pretty cool wood pulls.  When I have all 3 dressers lined up together for a picture they remind me of Batman!  Something about the way the curve.  They are almost a bit Gothic looking.

That's all for me today.  It has a busy and super-duper hot week.  Its amazing the paint even dried on these bad-boys! Our humidex was consistently above 40 celcius.