Cabinet Makeover + How to Strip and Refinish Wood

Cabinet Makeover and How to Stain & Refinish Furniture

Robbie’s sweet grandfather passed away in March 2011. He was such a strong man, never wavering in his faith despite a long battle with cancer. I never once heard this man complain no matter what challenges he was faced with. I never knew one of my grandfathers and the other passed away when I was very young so it was such an honor to be able to call him my granddad. I’m so thankful that Sophie was able to meet him and only wish that Audrey had had the chance as well.

We enjoyed a good visit with him a few weeks before he passed away and got some great pictures of him with Sophie. The white chair she’s sitting in here was his when he was little.

I love this one of him winking at her….so classic Grandpa Hill!

Shortly after Grandpa Hill passed, Grandma Hill moved to a retirement home. The family tried to find homes for much of the furniture in their house, and Robbie and I selected a corner cabinet that would fit nicely in our dining room. We have a 8 chair table in our dining room so there’s not much room for a full size buffet and this corner unit was the perfect fit. Here it is still sitting in the dining room of his grandparent’s house. (Gotta love that avacado green carpet, huh?)

We liked the style of the cabinet but not the color, so we decided to refinish it. The color was not a good match for our very dark brown espresso finish table and chairs. Deciding to refinish and actually doing it are two totally different things. It sat in our shed for over a year before we finally carved out the time to take on the task of stripping and refinishing the piece. I say “we” but honestly this was all Robbie’s doing!

How to strip wood

It’s hard work to refinish furniture but if you have time and patience it’s a project worth tackling. The first thing you do is remove the finish from the furniture using a paint/varnish stripper.

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You just paint the stripper on, leave it for approximately 15 minutes, and then use a puddy knife to remove the varnish. You likely will have to repeat this process several times. It tooks 3 or 4 coats of the stripper to fully remove the varnish. This the worst part of the job! You end up with a bunch of gunk like this…. Ewwwww!!!

This is what the wood looks like afterwards.

Then you wipe the surface down really well with a liquid deglosser in order to remove the residue and stickiness. Here is the striped buffet cabinet prior to staining.

Then Robbie stained the cabinet with Minwax Wood Finish Stain in espresso. I don’t remember where I was when he started the staining process but I have no pictures to share!

When it was all said and done it was a pretty amazing transformation!

I love how it turned out! It’s so nice to have the extra space to store our nice glasses and dishes, and now we have a special memento from Robbie’s grandparents.