A few years ago when my Nama and Papa passed away, my mom and I were tasked with cleaning out all of their homes. They were not wealthy people by any means, but had accumulated a few small inexpensive rental properties, my Great- Grandmother’s home and their own home by the time they passed, so there was a LOT to go through. Now, going in, I was convinced I knew every piece of furniture and every item they owned, after all, I did live with these people for 20 years! When we got there though, we were met with two pieces of realization. One, they were hoarders. I wish I was kidding, at some point I found 30 year old power bills. Seriously, boxes of them! This was back when your account number was your social security number, so we basically had a room filled with documents that needed to be shredded rather than just tossed. We did not have dead animals or some of the craziness you see on some hoarding TV shows, but I did find a can of old cherry seeds. I guess she thought maybe at some point she would be planting a cherry tree forest.

The other thing that we realized very quickly was that there were some incredible pieces of mid-century furniture in these old houses. They have been left to age without much care, and some were even used outside as deck furniture so they had weathered the sun and snow. They needed some love, but they had great bones and we knew we could do something with them. We decided to bring them back with us.

This really was the start of my love affair with mid-century modern pieces. We brought them home and slowly started working to get them back to beautiful. It is a manual process to make these old pieces work again. We worked on quite a few before we got the process down, but when we did, we were able to make this incredible bar happen.

Step One: The first thing we did was to take the legs and knobs off the bar. The metal on both needed to be cleaned and shined up. We left those to the side while we worked on the next step. Then we took the doors and hinges off and sat those aside as well because it is easier to make sure all the pieces get appropriately cleaned before you start working with them if you have removed them from the larger piece.

Step Two: Next we used a Murphy Oil Soap Original Wood Cleaner and a clean sponge to wipe down all of the wood. During this process we realized that the piece in the back was a replacement piece for what we think was mirrored glass. It had been badly placed on the back, so we took that off and sat it aside once it was cleaned.

Step Three: After we got everything cleaned up, we used some Awesome Degreaser from the Dollar Store to scrub the entire bar and all removed pieces. This removes those finger prints, left over food residue, and any grease that might have been left to soak into the wood. You want to make sure you do this because any greasy spots on the wood will cause your paint not to settle correctly.

Step Four: Probably the hardest step about the entire process is the sanding. For this piece, because it seemed more delicate than some of our other pieces we stuck with hand sanding. For this we picked up some fine sand paper at Home Depot. A box of 220 (fine) sand paper was more than enough and ran us about $12.00. We used a fine sand because we were just looking to smooth out some rough spots and a light sanding helped to prep the surface for painting and lacquering making that task a little easier. If you are trying this at home, don’t forget to make sure you are following this process for all of the pieces. After you finish sanding, make sure that you again use the soapy water and the degreaser to make sure the surface is completely clean and ready tor paint.

Step Five: We always wait at least 4 hours before moving on to the next step, but let’s get serious, we have a tendency to start projects and not finish them for a day or two (or if you ask my husband; a year or two) so it is usually more than 4 hours. Really all we want is to make sure that the surface is completely dry before we start applying paint. For this piece we wanted it to match another piece in my living room that we had completed a few years earlier. I have never been a big fan of woodgrains, so we painted white around the body of the piece white to go with the rest of my furniture, and left the drawers the natural tone. Now most people would have probably used a chalk paint for this, but I have two crazy little boys so I wanted to make sure it was sturdy paint, and being a bar I was sure it would get wet, so we used Behr Satin Paint in Ultra Pure White. We always use a fine roller for our furniture painting to reduce any grain or pattern in the paint. I want it as smooth as possible.

Step Six: After the paint dries, we take each piece, painted or not, and do one thin layer of lacquer. We follow the instructions on the can, and we learned the hard way that a good amount of ventilation is key here. Trust me, you do not want to smell those fumes. We gave the lacquer two days to dry and then we put it all back together. We used fine nails to secure that back piece in after painting it white.

The very last thing we had an issue with was the drawer inside. It was so barren and looked very boring, so we took some leftover teal vinyl from our chair upholstery project and cut it to fit the drawer, and sealed it down with wood glue which seems to be working perfectly. The final result is one of my favorite pieces we have redone.

Let me know what you think!