This project was exhausting. I had been avoiding it since we moved in. I should have continued to avoid it! I bought these two pieces when we were living in Okinawa in 2012 or 2013. They are from Thailand. When we bought them, they had a very dark stain on them that was still sticky to touch. Anything that rubbed up against it would end up with a dark stain. The stain was also thrown on there so heavy that it was caked in the intricate curly cues of these pieces. I just thought it was rubbing off because of a weird coating they used. Over the years of now working with wood and stain, I've come to the conclusion that they just didn't wipe the stain off as they coated it. They also never put a top sealant on it. I loved the dark wood then, but my decorating tastes changed over the years and I decided to paint them white two years ago (I posted in the blog about it too). We only lightly sanded it (because it was gunking up the sandpaper), and then I threw two coats of white paint on it. I loved how it had turned out and how it lightened up the room.
Fast forward to last summer when we moved here to North Carolina, and when the movers carried them in, I was disappointed to see the paint chipping off (picture below). I knew in my heart that I had needed to sand it better, and I knew that I needed to get this baby to bare wood before I could get a paint to stay how it should. I did not want to put chalk paint on it, either. I also knew that because all of the small details on this piece, it was going to be a HUGE headache to scrape and sand this paint off. I pulled off the bandaid two weeks ago and got to work. The plan was to get all of the paint and stain off of it, and then re-paint it white.
In these pictures, you can see the paint rubbing off (especially around the hinges that I should have never painted).
I went straight for the nasty chemicals in a stripper because I knew I had to cut though a thick layer of stain underneath.
The paint pealed up beautifully and I had a glimmer of hope that the project might not be so horrific.
When we got to the stain underneath, puddy knives scraped it off pretty well, so we didn't apply a second coat of paint stripper.
I spent 2 days from morning until night scraping off paint on the doors from both pieces.
After I got the white paint off, I was stumped on how we were to get the gunky dark stain off in these intricate parts. After doing some research, I purchased this AMAZING tool. These are usually called radial discs or abrasive bristles that you put on a Dremel or a drill. It saved me from HOURS of work. It is now my favorite tool. It is usually made to polish metals, but by golly, it sanded and got the gunk out in all of this mess!
You can see in this picture the left is the door before using the radial disc, and the right is after. It wasn't perfect, but this little baby did what I wanted it to. I wish I could have purchased bigger ones (they make 3 inch and 6 inch), but man are they expensive!
Over the week, I made a huge mess in the garage. Not only did I scrape it down to the wood, Danny would come home at night and sand it down with his orbital sander. I also soaked the hinges in paint thinner and got those cleaned up.
Here you can see the gunk (old stain) that was scraping off fairly well. I was so grateful that we purchased some great heavy duty scrapers, along with one that had all shapes and sizes of heads that you can put on it. That helped me a lot with the doors.
At this point, my heart started hurting at the thought of throwing white paint back on to these bad boys. I had spent COUNTLESS hours getting it to where it was. And surprisingly, I adored it! I LOVED it AS IS!!! I did not want it white anymore. My only hesitation was whether it would look good in my dining room with this raw wood color.
In order to make a final decision, Danny and I carried them back in the house, and they have been sitting there the last few days. I didn't want to make a rash decision, and I REFUSE to ever scrape paint off of them again. So if I paint it white, it stays white. So---as of right now, my decision is to keep it just like this. I haven't sealed the 2 pieces yet, but I plan on doing that at the end of August. What do you all think? Should I paint them white or leave them as is?
***Edited to add:
I kept it the way it is! I sealed it with a matte polycrylic and here it is while I was doing that!
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