Staining Ice Chests

All right, time to dust off this blog.  It’s been awhile since I’ve posted, not because I haven’t been doing anything creative, but because I’ve been doing lots of creative-type things.  So, my intention is to begin posting regularly-ish again (my hope is for every Tuesday and Thursday) — stay tuned!

First, I want to show you what I was up to on warm, non-rainy weekends for most of the spring (oddly enough, LA was fairly cold & rainy this spring, so it took awhile to get these finished!).  My cousin Dave moved to New Zealand just after Christmas last year and had to get rid of a lot of his things.  He had some old-fashioned ice chests, two that he wanted to keep, two that he wanted to give away to Gavin and I.  I was really excited to hear that he wanted to give us these — I was hoping to get two night stands for our bedroom, and these ice chests work perfectly!

The chests were a medium-colored wood, and Gavin and I like dark-colored wood better.  So, I thought that perhaps it’d be fun to make this a project and totally re-stain them.  Unfortunately, I did not take before shots.  However, the process was to use a stripper to remove the old sealant, then to sand off some of the old stain, then put the new stain on, then to reseal.  Then, since I couldn’t find new hardware, I cleaned up the original brass hardware before putting it back on.

The process was not difficult, but it was a lot of hard work, which was nice to do outside on those beautiful spring days.  It was very rewarding to see these coming together, and SUPER fun to use the Brasso to clean up the hardware to make it look brand new!  This has already got me thinking about a couple of other pieces of furniture that we have that I can do this to in the future!

This entry was posted in brass, furniture, hardware, ice chests, night stands, staining. Bookmark the permalink.

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