Jewelry Box DIY

So last week I posted the beginning stages of the jewelry box refinish project I was working on. This was sort of a trial run to see how well I did with this to determine weather or not I should attempt refinishing some old furniture. Well, despite the few touch ups I will have to do when this rainy fall is all done, it turned out beautifully. Keep in mind I have not put the poly-urethane coat on yet so it still looks a bit dry but....

 Before:

   

 Ugh, just a bit too pink for me.

After:

I also relined the drawers,

So all in all it took about two days simply because I ran out of free time and cost me about 12 bucks. Less if you already have sandpaper and or stain.
The procedure: It was really as simple as it looks. I sanded off the varnish and as much of the previous stain as possible. Then I used about three coats of ebony wood stain, took fifteen minutes. I "carefully" ripped out the pink felt lining and simply wrapped it in some contact shelving paper. Same with the cabinet walls and the stained glass front. Super glue the pieces and put them back in place. Use a small screw driver to tuck the edges back in.
Used some plastic spray paint to change the color of the carousel in the top of the cabinet. 

Screw everything back together and tada!

I am in the process of house hunting for the next couple weeks so I'm not sure when I will have time for more projects at the moment but my daughter's birthday is coming up in a couple of weeks so I guess it will have to be decorations and making goody bags. 

Mmmm, more coffee needed, off I go. Until next time.

Rainy Day Projects

I love rainy days and fall in New England certainly provides plenty of those. While they are the perfect time to catch up on a book or snuggle in some PJs. unfortunately, if your like me, I rarely sit still for long and I'm soon looking for something to keep my hands busy.

Today, for instance, I got some work done on my jewelry box. Years ago my step Father got me a jewelry box, as I had asked for one. This was something left behind in an apartment he was clearing out. It was a wooden stand up with drawers. The drawers and cabinet were lined with a rose pink felt and the cabinet door had a cheesy stained glass flower. While this is perfect for a little kid or little old ladies, it's not really my taste.

 


I saw a potential in this piece though. In a previous post I had mentioned I was starting work and a couple of other projects, an armoire and a china hutch. Well, since I haven't done any woodworking in a very long time I decided the jewelry box would be the perfect practice run since I didn't care about the box anyway.
(The other two pieces were handed down to me by my mother but they were so damaged from several generations of children she just gave me a good luck and let me know how that works out for ya.)

After two days of sanding and deconstruction I got all the finish and stain off, next I will use an ebony stain on it but as I said it's rainy so I will have to wait a couple days. Since stain was put on hold for a bit I decided to move forward with planning. (I'm a wing it kinda girl.) I didn't like the pink felt so I started prying it all out of the drawers and the cabinet. Each piece of felt was wrapped around a cardboard piece. Felt would have been the preferred material but I didn't have any. Instead I used some contact paper I had left over from redoing our gross back splash and wrapped each piece of liner. It started out a little wrinkly because it's paper wrapped around fabric but it accomplished what I needed it to.

Especially when I have refilled the drawers you will not see much more of the liners.

The cabinet had a mirror in the back that I considered removing but washed it and it cleaned up very nicely. Hopefully the rain will hold off a little tomorrow so I can get the first layer of stain on it.

In the cabinet there is a rotating hook that is a crappy plastic and painted metallic gold. That has already been removed and will be spray painted a matte black with Krylon plastic spray paint. That stuff is awesome, I used it to paint some old baby formula containers and turned them into craft storage containers.

So when the jewelry box is finished I will post photos of the finished product and how I did it.

Also, if you have any questions on any projects I do or would like to know how I did anything I post on here feel free to comment and I can write another post with photos on that particular project.

See you again soon.