Sneak Peek: Dresser Re-do

My little helper

Weekend Project #4: Dresser

Well, what started out as a weekend project has now turned into a week-long one. I got this great old dresser from my friend Nichole and, although it's green (which I love!), it's going to go between my two green chairs (that's right, I got the other one recovered compliments of the IRS) so I needed to repaint it.

Instead of just painting the dresser, I decided to strip and stain the top like several pieces I had seen on Miss Mustard Seed's blog and paint the rest a creamy white. She even has a great tutorial about staining and finishing furniture that was going to make the whole process super easy. Or, so I thought.

True to form, I forgot to take a before picture, and when I realized that fact, I had already pulled out all the drawers and put the first coat of stripper on the top. Plus, since I have been doing all the work with this guy:

on my foot for tendonitis (another story), I wasn't about to wrangle the drawers back over to the dresser. All that said, here's a close-to "before" picture:

Have you ever stripped a piece of furniture? It's HARD. I stopped counting after six applications of stripper, but I finally got to bare wood.

 After stripping the top of the piece, I sanded everything to prep for painting and staining:

Then came the stain....and that's where this story take a terrible turn. You see, when I first applied the stain, it didn't exactly absorb evenly. And in my stupidity, I decided it probably just needed more stain - three more layers in fact, all left on for 15 minutes before wiping. I bet you can guess where that got me. 

This picture of the final (not really) product is actually quite flattering because in person, the top actually looked black - far from the dark walnut it should have been. 

Of course, I was super bummed when I realized it wasn't at all what I had wanted the piece to look like - especially after all my stripping work. Levi suggested I just paint the whole piece, but I wasn't ready to give up yet. After all, I hope to have this dresser for awhile, so I want it to be what I envisioned. 

After researching stain strippers, I picked one up at Home Depot and started the whole stripping process over again, only this time it was even harder. I've gotten the wood back to a somewhat decent state (unfortunately, I don't think it will ever be as light as after I stripped the paint), and I'm hoping the stain does better after using a pre-stain conditioner this time. Phew. Here we go again...stay tuned.

Levi the FTO

My lack of posts lately has been due to lack of material; however, one exciting thing did happen recently - Levi got promoted to "corporal" or FTO (Field Training Officer) at work. Now he'll get to train new recruits as they shadow him on his normal shifts by teaching them EMT skills and checking off that they can do them.

He was so excited to start training people that he took it upon himself to create a syllabus that outlines the objectives of the training as well as expectations of both himself and the recruit. I was very impressed that he went above and beyond the required one-day training class he had to do.

Each recruit will stay with Levi anywhere from two-six weeks (until Levi feels he/she has a good enough handle on the necessary skills). He got his first recruit today, a girl about our age, and he was very excited about going to work because it would be new and different. When I checked in with him this evening to see how things were going, he said that it's very difficult to work an emergency call while training someone (I would imagine this would be especially true if it's a legitimate emergency), but it was going well.

I'm excited that Levi feels invigorated in his job with this new responsibility and adventure. He's really a very good teacher, and I know the recruits will benefit from having been trained by him. Hopefully this will tide him over until the fire departments start hiring again!