The Stripper Vs. The Dresser

Originally posted February 24th, 2013

Step one. Find a super cheap dresser. This can be done the patient way, or the ambitious way. The patient way means casually perusing garage sales as you see them and keeping your eyes peeled for abandoned furniture.

Wait. If forgot a step. The first step is to do the apartmenttherapy.com January cure. The most important part of the January cure is the part where you sit in a chair and space out for ten minutes until you can fully realize your place’s potential. I did this and realized that my tiny apartment could feel significantly less tiny by rearranging my furniture, and shockingly, that my house could accommodate an actual dresser. Which means I can get rid of the plastic one I’m hiding in my closet.

THEN you choose either method to find a dresser. You might have noticed—I’m not a patient person. So I took the ambitious route and scoured the internet (specifically the part called craigslist.org) for cheap non-ikea furniture. It did not take long before I found this little gem for $20.

In case you’re curious, the dresser did not fit neatly into my Korean subcompact. Luckily, it was both budget friendly and located right here in the valley. So I could just kind of tie my trunk shut, sort of, and head home with my loot.

So THEN as you might imagine, I spent plenty of time stressing. Because I while I’m happy to admit that I don’t know what I’m doing, admission of this fact does not in any way lessen its factuality. So I stress.

I buy this book on refinishing furniture on my tablet that is TERRIBLE, and I would tell you what one it is but I feel kinda bad doing that because it’s clearly published by the author and that would not be cool of me. But it basically told me that I need to use eight kinds of stripper and thirteen kinds of sandpaper. And THEN I have to use twenty more kinds of sandpaper in between layers of stain. Although, maybe I counted some steps twice because the author described the process in this crazy circular way that made my head spin.

Luckily, I’m not patient. So I don’t wait to figure it out so much. I just go to Home Depot. Can you believe there’s a Home Depot in North Hollywood? I didn’t even have to go to Burbank. I don’t know how I’d missed this fact for so long. But I did.

The lovely gentleman at Home Depot who saw me wandering around the paint section with the I-want-to-know-what-I’m-doing-but-I-don’t look on my face directed me to a jug of stripper that isn’t flammable or too stinky and appears to take off both paint and varnish. I’m pretty sure my book told me I’d need different strippers depending on the type of finish, but the product says it does it all, so I ignore the book.

Here’s the part of the Home Depot with all the wood fillers. This is the part where I go, holy crap, there are that many types of wood fillers??

I bought wood filler (because this dresser has been beat to hell) and rags and brushes and scrapers and a big drop cloth (of course) and gloves and sand paper and I don’t even know what else.

At this point, I’ve spent three times the cost of the dresser on all the stuff at Home Depot just to get the old paint off. I haven’t even thought about what I’m going to need to buy to put new stuff on it again.

NOTE: Failing It Yourself is NOT the thrifty option. Don’t fool yourself.

So I get home and I don’t delay at all. That drop cloth is down in the driveway in seconds flat. Lucky for me, it is a windless, cloudy, warm day in the valley. It is PERFECT for stripping furniture. Which I recognize because I have such a firm hold on what I’m doing, of course.

I strap on the mask and the gloves, read the directions for the umpteenth time, and spread the stripper on the side of the dresser with a really cheap paint brush.

This brown paint on the dresser is totally not a match for my stripper. It’s flaking off before I’m even done applying it! Hooray!

What I quickly discover, though, is that there’s another layer of yellow varnish under the brown dresser. And LUCKY for me, the stripper does take them both off, and if I let it sit for twenty minutes or so I can get all off at once.

Any time I’ve ever imagined stripping off old paint, I picture the old crap coming off all at once in these thick gooey strips, and I’ve always imagined the whole thing feeling incredibly satisfying. Guess what? IT IS.

The only slightly unsatisfying thin is that the yellow varnish is really disgusting as it comes off. It doesn’t come off in solid strips, but in this gooey, mucusy sludge. Once I figure out how to scrape and then immediately transfer the goo to the rag in my other hand, it goes pretty quickly. After the initial strip, I typically only have to do a once over with some steel wool dipped in the stripper to get off any tough bits. So one piece at a time, I strip the sucker clean.

According to my book, I needed to use mineral spirits to get any residue  off the wood. Now, my father has used mineral spirits for years, so I know: there is nothing stinkier in the world than mineral spirits. Or anyway, nothing stinkier that is also safely stored in a can in the garage.

But I am SUPER SMART and I buy the “odorless” mineral spirits. Is it really odorless? No, of course not. But it is by no means the absolutely awful, throat-clenching misery of normal mineral spirits.

Now. This detail is pretty critical. Because it’s starting to rain as I am rubbing the whole thing down one last time.

Remember those clouds I mentioned? They were indeed hiding the sun perfectly. But the whole precipitation thing was a major drawback.

So…I had to move this thing back into the house much earlier than I had planned. I had intended to let it dry outside overnight. But THAT would have been a disaster.

So. Thing is moved inside. And my house smells a little awful. But oh well.

Here it is! The naked dresser!

I’m sure you can see the places where the paint did not really come off…Yeah, I see them too.

But I’ll explain that whole debacle in the next step.

After we strip the dresser, we have to dress the dresser, amirite?