From Outdated to Farmhouse: Sideboard Upcycle

From Outdated to Farmhouse: Sideboard Upcycle

The dining set that I finished early this fall had a sideboard/buffet that came along with it. The piece was in great condition and I really love the idea of having a sideboard in the dining room for storage. You can check out the original post about the dining set makeover HERE
This sideboard needed some work to bring it into my vision and this decade so I'm giving it its own post to show all the steps!

This is a before shot of the sideboard. It is in great condition... the doors and drawers all work fine! The hard ware and the carving on the drawer fronts needs to go. So, the first step is to remove all the hardware including the hinges. All those pieces would be replaced later. Then. the doors were taken off and the drawers removed.

The top surface was then sanded down to bare wood.  Next it was stained in Carbon Gray wood stain and finished with a few coats of wipe on Polyurethane. The rest of the body was then painted a country gray calk paint, then wiped down with a dark glaze. It was then finished with a matte polyacrlic.

The drawer fronts were carved into pretty deep. So, to get them to be a nice flat drawer front, I had to fill the carved parts with wood filler. Once the wood filler was dry, it was sanded smooth by hand with a sanding block. This process had to be repeated 3 times to get the drawer fronts to look smooth because the carving was really deep and intricate. Then, the drawers got painted with the same chalk paint. When the paint dried I could still see where I had filled the carvings. So, I took a sanding block and lightly sanded the paint and put another coat of paint on. Once the paint dried, I could tell that I had the nice smooth finish I was looking for.

I added some brushed nickel hardware (Drawer cup-pulls and knobs for the cabinet doors) and new brushed nickel hinges. The cup pulls that I put on the drawer fronts are the same ones that I used for the bar cabinet that I re-did last year... Check out that project HERE

The finished project really gives this piece an updated look.
Here's another look at the before and after!

Don't forget to check out the full project!
From Outdated to Farmhouse: Dining Set Makeover

 

From Outdated to Farmhouse: Dining Room Set Makeover!!

A dining set project can be an immense amount of work but the payoff can be huge when it turns out just as you hoped. I had been thinking about re-doing a dining room set for a while. I had looked around for an old set that needed some love without luck. The “modern farmhouse” tables are so nice because they have great character and I really wanted a dining set that captured that style.

I stumbled upon a set that a family member was getting rid of... Here are the before pics...

The table itself has that farmhouse table feel with those thick turned legs. It looks really solid and sturdy! Perfect look and it has 2 leaves to make it bigger!

Not sure if  I need the hutch... but maybe I will be inspired once I start working.
The chairs are nice, there are 2 with arm rests and 4 without.

Here’s the base of the hutch,(or sideboard) which  I definitely wanted for storage. The drawer fronts were a little outdated with the carving patterns but I decided that I could figure that out.

The first piece of the set that I worked on was the side board. Full details HERE With my sander, I removed the finish on the top surface down to bare wood. The next step was to smooth the bare wood to a nice finish by working my way up to a fine grit sanding disk. I worked up to a 220 grit to get a nice smooth finish. 

Because it was summer and very humid, I moved on to sanding the seats of the chairs, the tabletop and the 2 leaves. Every piece that was sanded was to be stained. I wanted to wait for the humidity to drop a bit before the staining and finishing process.

This was what the finish looked like before I started sanding. It was outdated.

Here is the sideboard.

 Here are the chairs with one of the seats sanded down.

Sanding took FOREVER!!!! It felt like the sanding was going to last the rest of my life! The weather had cooled off a bit too (after weeks of spare time sanding) and finally, it was all done and it was time to move on to staining. Thank goodness!!! I chose to use a carbon gray stain. It’s pretty dark and is very cool tones the top of the table and the top of the sideboard had a lot of warmth left in the wood so this stain really toned that down and worked great.

The next step is to put a finish on the sanded areas to seal it up. I chose to use a wipe on poly. It’s got a satin finish so it is not too shiny. To apply, simply take a lint free cloth and wipe the poly on to the surface. It was really easy to do. The tabletop required more layers of poly so I did lightly sand in between coats and when the final coat was dry, buffed it to a nice sheen. OH SO SMOOTH!

Now that the staining portion was done, I moved on to the next phase which was painting. I chose to paint the rest of the surfaces with chalk paint. I used Rustoleum's chalked in country gray for the sideboard, two chairs with arms and the legs of the table. For the 4 armed chairs I used a navy blue chalk paint to match them to a cabinet that I had previously done for the dining room. You can check out that post HERE After the 4 armless chairs were painted, they got a coat of Matte finish poly-acrylic.

The rest of the surfaces that were painted gray, were then wiped with a dark gray glaze to give them a more antiqued look then finished with matte polyacrylic.

It looks absolutely amazing!!! Her are the after photos...

 Before and After comparison of the sideboard. There was a lot of steps to this piece and I will be explaining that in another post! Check that out Sideboard Upcycle

The set in the dining room!

Before & After of the table.

My little pup wanted in on the pictures. This project was a lot of work but I’m so happy with the way it turned out. Don't be afraid to give this furniture project a try!