Buffet Blunders...

In my "About Me" section, I said I would share my blunders and triumphs in this wacky world of DIYing.  Well, here's a blunder for you.  Total disclosure - even if I look like a fool complete idiot to the rest of blogland.  Go ahead and have a good laugh at my expense.

Yesterday, Shari from Turnstyle Vogue Design and Styling was picking on me because I have yet to start the buffet I told her that I had a few weeks ago.  Now, if you want to see some awesome furniture, go to her blog.  WOW!  She turns out some fantastically elegant visions.  I always suffer from a little lot of furniture envy when I visit her blog.  She has flawless taste.  Me?  Eh.  Not so much.  I'm still figuring out what I like.

So, today I don't have any lovely little craft to show you that I have made.  That's because yesterday, I tackled the buffet.  I'm never one to back down from a challenge, even though this buffet skeered me.  Cue suspense music.  Dum Dum Daaaaaaah.

I found her about 2 months ago via Craigslist and brought her home to make her mine:

Sorry for the crooked-ness.  I've got things to do and places to be today, so I wasn't going to monkey with making it perfect.

I thought I had scored this fantastic find.  Its amazing just how much I've learned in the last couple of months.  Now, I'm rethinking the purchase.  I paid $60 for her, talking the seller down from his original $100 asking price.  I knew she had "minor" veneer issues, but nothing that a little ingenuity couldn't fix.  Uh huh.  Yeah.  Right.

My solid wood buffet is solid wood all right - COMPLETELY veneer on every available surface.  Clearly I have a lot to learn about what is and what is not solid wood.  Errrrrr...

I probably should have never bought her.  But, I had driven an hour to look at her and I wasn't going back empty handed.  I'm sure I can do something with her.  I'm just not sure what.  I fell asleep thinking about how I was going to tackle her issues because if I just let her sit, I'll never hear the end of it from the hubs - and I really want to be able to buy and refinish more furniture in the future.  I'm still proving to him that this new found interest is not a "phase".  Can I get an amen on that!

Yesterday, I started tackling what I thought was a veneer surface.  Now, you tell me how it is that the edges can all be peeling up, but the center would survive a nuclear attack!  Shari had done a great tutorial about how to remove veneer a few days ago, so I set about taking it off using her method:  Wet towel and a hot iron.  

I let the towel sit for 10 or so minutes as she instructed, put the iron on it, and then attacked it.  Hmmmm...  No go.  Rewet the towel, waited a little longer and tried again.  Finally I got a strip to come up and was doing a little happy dance when it stopped.  Just stopped.  Grrrrrr!  Patience, I kept telling myself.  Work at it.  Ease it off.  I pretty much had a whole entire conversation with myself as the veneer would sometimes come up as easy as butter, but then would all of sudden stick hard and no amount of wetting and hot iron would get it to budge.  Finally, I walked away from it for a few minutes, since I was seriously considering beating it with a sledge hammer.

I went back and forth between taking the knobs, doors, and hinges off and battling it out with the veneer.  Three hours later, I had 3/4 of it off...

It was about that time that I took another break and really started looking at the front of the piece.  I had realized when I bought it that the front of the drawers and the doors were all veneer because it was buckling.  I had a solution for that in mind before I ever brought it home.  However, I wasn't prepared for pretty much every single flat surface to be veneer too.   O.M.G.  That, I still don't know what to do about.  After I pulled all the veneer off, I realized that the wood beneath was really just very rough pieces of unsanded wood.  Isn't the wood underneath supposed to be sanded or something???  Oh snap!  I suppose it could be worse.  It could be plywood or composite board.  Yeesh!  At that point, I just sat down and stared at it and wondered why I ever get myself into these situations.  I realized then that I had three options:

1.  Admit defeat, hide it in the garage, and hope the hubs forgot I ever bought.  Out of sight, out of mind.

2.  Do a half-way job, not post about it, but still technically refurb it enough that the hubs will continue to support my desire to take old furniture and make it new.

3.  Work my tail off and turn this piece of trash into treasure.

Being the competitive sort, I never admit defeat unless I'm really backed into a corner.  I realized, I'm not there yet.  I will refinish this sucker come hell or high water.  And it will look good! 


By nightfall, I had removed all the venner where feasible, repaired any minor imperfections with wood glue and putty, and had half of it sanded.  If the sun hadn't set, I probably would have kept at it.  I had even considered asking the hubs to set up this thousand kilowatt work light he has.  It had become a battle.  Me vs.  The Buffet.  And I never back down from a challenge.  I will win.

Thankfully, the hubs treated us all to KFC when he got back from bidding jobs.  By the time I had put everything away, covered the piece up for the night, repaired the disaster that was the house from doing literally nothing inside all day...  I was exhausted.  I climbed into bed at 8:30 pm with aching arms and promptly fell asleep.


Unfortunately I'm not used to going to bed that early, so I was wide awake at 2:00 am and spent an hour laying in bed strategizing about how I'm going to refurb this baby.  Does anyone else get consumed about a difficult project like this or am I just nuts?  I fell back to sleep with a pretty good idea about how I'm going to finish this.


By the time the alarm went off at 6:00 am, I was ready to go.  Now, I've finished up the household chores and I'm ready to go at it again.  Hopefully, I will have better news to report tomorrow.


Until then, wish me luck!