Rocking Chair Refinishing Project and Outfitting the Living Room

I got obsessed with getting a rocking chair this fall. I went hiking in the Adirondacks and we stayed at an old cabin that had several comfortable Craftsman style rockers. I had been keeping an eye on the various online auction and sale site and pretty much resigned myself to the thought I'd never find one.   

To my surprised, one came on the market at a good price. It was a solid oak piece that was just the size and style I was looking for. The chair had been refurbished once before but so long ago that it had a lot of wear. Some joints needed reinforcement, the main leather and springs in the seat weren't very comfortable and the shellac finish was chipping and uneven.

I decided to take on refinishing and re-upholstering the chair. Luckily the shellac came of relatively easy with some mineral spirits.

I applied a light stain and oil finish just a hint darker than the original wood so that you could see the character but so that it didn't look brand new.

I got a piece of leather at a local fabric outlet. An aside: if you are ever looking for any type of fabric for a project, this is the Textile Discount Outlet in Chicago's Pilsen neighborhood has to be the best resource in the entire Chicagoland area. Floor after floor of fabrics and leather of every type you can think of.

Anyway, I removed the old spring seat and put in new webbing and padding to create a new one.

I am pretty happy with the outcome and for the first time, we have more than one seat in the living room. Here is a before and after so you can see the progress.  

Since I had already been paying attention to all of the local furniture ads, I soon became aware of another piece that I loved: an antique oak settle. I didn't plan on these purchases but am happy with the change. The new furniture fits the place perfectly and we really couldn't be happier. 

The Deadline is Here

We had family arriving yesterday for Thanksgiving so I had a sort of deadline to get as much completed on the rooms as possible.  I got up at my usual early hour and started the last round of painting.  I finished the painting about noon and then spent the next couple hours moving furniture back into the house. 

I am happy with how the colors look and love the new light shades on the fixture in the dining room.  I'll have to devote an entirely separate post to those.  The only problem, one that I didn't account for, is that with the darker wall colors, we'll need additional light sources in the room.  This really shouldn't have surprised me.  All of the images I see of Stickley's Craftsman Farms are full of shadows with several sources of glowing light from mica lamps are scattered around the rooms.  I may need to add additional lighting at the beams in the dining room.  I've already contacted Rejuvenation about possible fixtures.  We'll see how that goes.

The nicest part of the day in the house has always been just before sunset.  It is the only time that light streams into the home as all of our major windows face west.  With the new paint colors, it looks even nicer.

For now, I am going to enjoy the hard work and take time with the family.  On Sunday, I have to pick up again as I have a large list of items that are still incomplete on the project: a second coat of varnish on the dining room wood, strip and stain and varnish the built-in, strip and paint the air registers, replace and fix all of the outlets and switchplates with brass ones, and paint the mural or stencil above the picture rail in the dining room .  If I do the new dining room lighting, that needs to be added to the list also.  I almost forgot about the shades too.  When they arrive, I'll have to install the historic-looking linen roll-shades.  With any luck, I'll be able to complete a majority of this by Christmas!   

Color!

Finally, after weeks of stripping and cleaning and staining and varnishing, the fun part is here.  I finally get to put some color on the walls!  Everything looked really good primed but given my aversion to white, I couldn't wait to get it painted.

The color we chose is "Acorn".  It is an orange/squash sort of color.  It is not for the faint of heart but we like it.  The color choice was tough.  There are some deep golds and greens I liked very much also.  I guess I can always change the wall color next year if I get bored with this one.    

We used Behr paints from Home Depot.  Everyone has their favorite paints.  I don't.  I have used Benjamin Moore, Valspar and Behr on the house.  A word to the wise though: if you are going with Behr and doing a deep color, only use their "Ultra" product.  Their regular paint sucks ass and it will take you several coats to cover the wall.   

For the color above the high dado and picture rail, I screwed up.  I rarely... ...actually, I've NEVER been so off in my color choice before in my life.  I originally chose what I thought was a nice mellow yellow color.  Instead, it looked like a clown to a leak on my ceiling - the place looked like some sort of demented circus and it made the orange look really weird.    

Yesterday morning, I ran out, trying to rectify things with a new color.  I found a "Pyramid Gold" that I liked a lot and mellowed out the orange the way that I initially intended.    

I am really happy with the outcome and can't wait to get the furniture back in the house. 

I should note that during this project, I made the best investment I've made in my DIY life so far: movable scaffolding.  I got this for just under a hundred bucks at Home Depot.   I love it so much that I may just keep it up and use it as a piece of furniture - it goes so well with quarter-sawn oak!  If you don't like the look of it as much as I do, it folds up to 2'x4'x8" so it is not too tough to store.  It really came in handy and beat the crap out of working off of a ladder.  It is seriously worth checking out.   

Now I can't wait to get at the dining room.  The staining and varnish in that room has worked out well.  The ceiling was a total bitch but it looks awesome.  I have a lot of issues with the wood up there because the PO beat the hell out of it when they stripped it but the stain is pretty dark and hides many of the past errors.  I may blog on this later because I think it will make a great "what not to do to your woodwork" post. 

We have family coming for Thanksgiving so I am stopping the project for a few days, leaving the built-in for finishing later.  I hope to pick it up again and finish the buffet by early next week.  It would be nice to call this project "complete" in another week. 

A few photos that don't really communicate how much progress I've made...

...but I'll post the anyway.  I am well into stripping and refinishing the dining room woodwork.  I've decided to save refinishing the built-in until after Thanksgiving.  It is going to be a chore and I want to get the room back together before Thanksgiving as we are hosting dinner at the house.  I have all but three sections of ceiling stripped.  The entire room except these three sections have their first coat of stain.   

The improvement is noticable now.  I also started putting things in the garbage this week.  I am shocked at how much material and how many trips to the hardware store I've made in the past three weeks of this project.  I've gone through at least 12 rolls of paper towels, over 100 pairs of disposable gloves, 30 brass-bristle scrubbing brushes, 5 packages of steel wool, 3 gallons of de-natured alcohol and I believe I will finish the job with the single container of varnish and three cans of stain.  Oh, and a container of hand moisturizer.  I am a big pussy when it comes to this stuff and am thankful every day that my day job doesn't involve any sort of manual labor.  No matter how protected I've kept my hands, they are a mess: dried and numb.

We started priming the living room yesterday as well.  It is looking pretty good.  My friend John, who has some sort of fetish when it comes to painting plaster white, would consider the job finished at this point but we'll be performing an act of herecy and adding some very deep colors. 

I almost forgot to mention: I picked up the shades for the dining room light fixture on Friday.  I'll blog an entire entry on that expedition.  It was pretty awesome.  Unfortunately, I don't have too many pics but it was cool none the less.  Can't wait to get these things up on the light in the dining room.

Finally, did I mention the family is coming over for Thanksgiving?  I hope they like Boston Market...

Stripping ceiling beams sucks...

...thank God they were never painted.   I feel like I've gotten nowhere.  I've spent over 13 hours on the ceiling and am about half done.  It is going to be an ugly week if I hope to complete it all by the weekend.

The "work" that was previously done on the woodwork at the ceiling is probably the worst in the room.  It seems to make sense: it is not easy to get at and it has a lot of compound pieces so it is a bitch to work on.  Below is an image of, on the right: a piece I already cleaned and stripped and on the left: a piece I haven't worked on.  The difference is more remarkable than the cleaned wood in the living room. 

Meanwhile, we've moved the dining table into the living room.  I like the change so far.

The "First Coat"

I started applying the final finish the other morning and then quickly realized that things weren't quite right.  I didn't like the color.  It still seemed a little light so I quickly stripped the small section of wood that I started finishing and quickly applied an additional coat of stain to the entire room.  This added a little more time to the project but I think it was worth it.  When I put on the final coat, a linseed oil based varnish, it seemed to lighten to wood a bit and it needed a little more color depth.   

So far, I am happy with the look.  It is VERY glossy and the wood looks good.  I will be adding one more coat of varnish and then, depending on how things look, I may wait a couple weeks and then knock down the sheen with some steel wool. 

For the final finish, my woodworking guru, Jeff at Oak Brothers, gave me several suggestions.  One seemed interesting to me because it was touted for its "green-ness".  It is a varnish called "Le Tonkinois".  I believe it was formulated for boats so I am sure it will last a long time.  I put it on with a sponge brush and am really happy with it.  Besides tung oil, it may be the nicest stuff I've worked with.  It takes a good 24 hours to dry so the finish ends up being very even and it is not prone to dripping.  Any noticeable dripping can be easily re-touched even an hour or so after you apply it.   It supposedly contains no VOC's.  This should not be confused with it not having an odor because the stuff is actually pretty strong, odor-wise.  I also chose the gloss version as I was unsure of how I wanted the final finish to look.  The original finish had a bit of gloss to it so I figured I would start there and manipulate it later if I needed.  Once the finish is done, I would have put three coats of stain and two coats of varnish on the wood.          

The difference between the finished and unfinished parts of the rooms is remarkable.  Now that I have the finish on, I can start on the next room.

 

The dining room, with its beamed ceiling and huge built-in, is probably going to take a bit more time than the living room.  I got to work on the ceiling beams yesterday and it is taking quite a bit of time.  These were not stripped as well as any other parts of the house so there is a lot of shellac to take off.  The edges of the cove molding, at the ceiling, have also been painted over about a hundred times so I am scraping all of the old paint to create a crisp an edge as possible within each ceiling section.  Not fun.    

With any luck. I will be putting stain on the ceiling in a couple days.  This will make the schedule for painting to likely start on Saturday or Sunday.  I also hadn't mentioned: the glass shades that I ordered for the dining room light fixture are ready.  I am going to be traveling to the artist's studio, in Wisconsin, next week to pick them up.  I'll reserve a special blog entry for this one. 



A Bit More Than I Expected

I've been at the stripping and cleaning and re-staining thing for about two (long) weeks now and I will be putting the final coat of stain on the windows and window trim tomorrow morning.  There is a noticeable difference from where I started and I am glad I took this on.  I am not sure that I am doing the "best" job possible but I am happy with the outcome so far. 

I don't think I was prepared for how time-consuming this would be.  In addition to at least 6 hours a day on weekends, I spend about an hour and a half in the morning and then another two hours each night working on it.  The windows were certainly the worst part.  I re-stripped all of the frames and most of the tracks and stops (as best I could).  Luckily I have help on the weekends or I'd be woefully behind.   Now that I have the hang of it, I hope the dining room goes more quickly.  The photos don't really show what you see in person but they give a decent impression of how it is coming out. 

Here are a couple "update shots" of the completed staining in the living room:

Second Coat of Stain

I did a second coat of stain on the woodwork this morning.  I used only the Red Mahogany for this second coat.  I m really happy and think I am going to stop here with the color and darkness.  It is pretty darn close to what I wanted so I'd rather not fool with it anymore.  I should be done with the living room cleaning and staining and started the final finish by tomorrow night.

As a comparison, the above pic is from this morning, with the second coat and the bottom pic is from yesterday, with only one coat. 



Staining in the main rooms

I finished enough of the cleaning of the trim in the living room where I could start staining.  I taped off some areas and put down drop cloths but still made a total mess.  I painted the stain on with a sponge brush and then let it sit for about 5 minutes and then wiped it down.   

I am mixing two colors to get an approximation of what was initially there.  After one coat, I am going to do a second and may go heavier on the red mahogany in the second round. 

I think that the extra time cleaning was worth it.  I probably should have spent even more time but I am just not sure how many times I can go over a single piece of wood without going insane.  I knew that the PO did a shitty job stripping the wood but I never realized how much dirt and paint and other crap was on the wood.  The difference between the cleaned and finished wood in the living room and the untreated wood in the dining room is remarkable. 

 UNCLEANED WOOD IN THE DINING ROOM

WOOD CLEANED AND WITH THE FIRST COAT OF STAIN IN THE LIVING ROOM

I've set a schedule to try and complete a good portion of this for the holidays.  I'll now alternate between cleaning, staining and applying the final finish to areas until I am done.  I hope to start painting in the living room next week.  We are hosting Thanksgiving Dinner at our house and it would be nice if folks didn't have to eat in a construction zone.