From Mold to Bold

We purchased an old, ugly patio furniture set (table and two chairs) on Craigslist for $10. The furniture needed to be sanded, stained and sealed.
Here's a chair before we did anything. 

As you can see, this furniture set needed a lot of work. So that's what we did. We started by sanding all the visible wood. The "proper" way to refinish a piece like this is to take off all the wood, work from there and then reassemble the furniture after everything is done. However, with fear of breaking the furniture past repair, we stuck to not taking any of the wood off. 

This is after we sanded the chairs. It already looks so much better than when we purchased it for sure. Now, since it was sanded the wood will soak up the stain nicely. 

You can see here that the stain looks really nice and the chair keeps on improving. We did this to all of the pieces (obviously, so they match). Next was sealing the chairs, but it doesn't look any different from the stain (because it's clear) so I though it would be useless to add a picture. REMINDER: do not stain any of the metal pieces or they will be sticky forever (which is why I mentioned the "proper" way to do this because all of that would be avoided but oh well).

So after some time and elbow grease, we now have this really nice patio set! All in all this whole project cost about $20. Happy refinishing!!

DIY Floating Shelves

I'm in an Interior Design class and the tech specialist on campus asked the class if we would design his classroom, as we have already done another teacher's room. We asked him his budget and what he liked and the class came up with a story board. We presented our ideas and he didn't like a little bit of it so we tweaked it to be exactly what. I landed on making three shelves with frames of car related things because that's what he likes. Here's how!

I went out and bought 2 1x4's and 1 1x2. I went to Home Depot and they cut each 8' piece into 22" piece sections for the 3 shelves.

While I was there, I picked up some minwax stain in the color "Dark Walnut", because I found it works best.

Then I stained the wood (and my hands).
(pictured is only pieces for two shelves!)

It's time to start gluing! I used gorilla glue because everyone knows that's the best. I glued one of the 22" 1x4 to another 22" 1x4 piece like this.

I did that with all 6 1x4 pieces to start the 3 shelves. I let that sit overnight to make sure the glue set all the way. After that, I glued the 1x2 to the almost done shelf. Make sure that when you glue the 1x2 that you glue it onto the same piece that you glued the second 1x4 on. Just look at the pictures, its too hard to explain.

Again, I let that sit over night to make sure its set all the way. After that, I drilled in pilot holes for the screws. I did one at 11" because its the middle and then from the outsides, I went in 2 1/2". I chose some dark screws to match the dark stain so it wouldn't be as noticeable. 

Woohoo! You're done! Here's the final product! I love the way it turned out!