Handsome Rustic Gentleman

Hello Friends!
As you read on my “about me” page, this whole journey is completely new to me and I’m having the time of my life!  I can take my time and fully engage myself in a project so that my true talent and creativity can ring through my pieces.  We love showing the wood in pieces and sometimes that takes time depending on the shape or the process to get there.  I wanted to talk about this handsome little piece that I just finished in July. 

I bought this dresser awhile ago, while we were part of a shop here in town.  We were low on pieces and I had to rush to get it done to fill space on the floor.  This meant I had to pick a color I had already in stock and try to get the bubbling veneer off this piece in a hurry.  This dresser was already in amazing shape, so it didn’t need much for repair work other than a few bubbling pieces of veneer.  I don’t ever repair or replace veneer since I have learned that if I peel it off there is usually some really awesome wood under it, that once stained reveals awesome patterns on the wood grain with some glue still deep in the pores of the grain. 

First, I take a scraper and take off the veneer that can easily be peeled off.  My weapon of choice is a heat gun but there are several ways you can take veneer off.  A lot of people fear taking veneer off, but it just takes a little elbow grease and patience.  You take the heat gun (usually around 950 degrees works) to soften up the glue that is holding the veneer in place.  Once it starts to soften (make sure not to burn your wood under the veneer) take your stiff scraper and start to peel up your veneer in chunks that is softened.  You will do this for the entire section or pieces that are left.  Once all the veneer is off, I take my orbital sander with a 120-grit paper to the section to take any of the rough pieces off.  Once finished I go over it again with a 220-grit paper to make it butter smooth.  Once finished then take a damp cloth and wipe down all the dust off your project.  If you are going to paint this then you would want to continue to primer it, or if you want to stain this you are good to go with whatever color you are choosing.  Originally, I went with Varathane Interior weathered Wood Accelerator in the Brown color.  When I refinished it to fulfill my creative need on this dresser, I once again sanded it all down and used Miniwax in the color of Ebony.  This gave it such a dark rustic look.
​
This dresser had a cherry red stain on it when I received it and since the color I had in stock was such a light green color, I knew I was going to have to stain this.  Now this was before I became a Wise Owl retailer and I had Zinsser Bin Primer.  Take a guess how many coats I had to do before the red wouldn’t bleed through.  Three, three coats of primer is how many coats this took before my test piece of green wouldn’t bleed.  Then let’s add two more coats of green to cover the white primer I just used.  Now I just have to put the top coat which I chose wax on this piece to coast the chalk mineral paint.  Now I have to do the mirror on this massive piece of furniture.​

Again, I must take the veneer off the mirror, since my plan was to use the same stain on the mirror.  The wood decorative piece that holds the mirror I had planned to paint in the same green as the dresser.  Another 3 coats of primer and another two of the paint (I’m getting low on paint at this point and am praying that nothing bleeds).  Well 3 months later I’m not in love with my piece.  The only thing I loved about it was the fact that the ceramic knobs were so dang cute, and they matched the paint color.  When we moved out of the shop, we wanted to give our image a “up do” with the paint we just signed up to be retailers for.  Wise Owl has such rich colors, and I wanted to paint with all of them.  Piece by piece I started redoing them to have a richer look to them.  I could practice on blending different colors together.  I could also then use the One Hour Enamel so I could emphatically tell the world about this amazing product. 
The color I chose for the redo on this dresser was Poseidon.  It’s a dark rich blue with some hints of green, which paired perfectly with the rustic dark wood drawers and mirror frame.  I couldn’t leave it at that.  How simple.   It needed some depth so, I took some Black and Higgins Lake and blending it with the Poseidon on the squared that bordered the sides of the dresser.  To finish the look, we found some perfect black ceramic knobs to tie off this rustic dresser.  I couldn’t be happier with the outcome on this.   Did we mention that we took some Tobacco Flower Wise Owl Salve to the drawers to refresh and clean them up.  ​