Driftwood Deco Buffet

We are in the process of buying house and we have been so busy between packing, signing forms and trying to get rid of our junk and empty out our inventory. My new year’s goal was to work one project at a time as is, no stockpile of furniture, just whatever I find that day comes home and leaves a week later. It’s unrealistic considering our sales in our booth is so sporadic…just don’t tell my husband that!

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Anyway, this was a piece we restored for a friend. Honestly, we were a bit nervous with this one. This was a piece given to our friend from her neighbor. She wanted to restore it and I told her we would a long time ago, I just didn’t realize how much work it needed. It needed a new back, the drawers literally crumbed in our hands. The doors and side panels were warped and peeling, the legs were missing some of their parts, and last but not least…the top. It lost all its veneer and looked like particle wood. Not sure how much age and weather it had but for wood to turn to crumbly, dusty, rot. Who knows how old this buffet really is.

My friend wanted to keep as much of this piece original as possible. So that meant saving the drawers, doors and hardware. Since the drawers fell apart, it was easy to remove these knobs. The reminded me of frosted ding dongs.

So the first thing we did, was re-glue the drawers back together. They were dovetailed drawers, so it was pretty easy to figure out how to put them back together. It was just a waiting game to make sure they still fit into the drawers.

After that we replaced the side panels. The veneer was far gone and the wood underneath was just to warped to save. The legs to this piece were part of the structure, meaning they were not screwed in. They were turned out of the leg. So we had to cut out the panel, remove the remaining panel from inside the leg using a flat head, sawed out a notch for the new panels to slide in.

Here is a visual of what I’m talking about. See how the panel slides into the notch of the leg? The clamp you see on the foot is actually a part of the foot we cut off from the back and glued onto the front to even out legs.

Here it is with a new top. You can see in this picture how bad the side panels really were. Jake routed out a new edge for the top and sanded it down.

After sanding off all the chipping paint, we a laid down 2 coats of General Finishes Endure Sanding Sealer. I did this because no matter how much sanding we did, some areas where the veneer was removed, was still rough and rugged. we essentially had to build a layer of sanding sealer to make a level surface for the paint. After the sealer had dried, I sprayed on 3 coats of General Finishes Milk Paint in “Driftwood.” Then I distressed the detail. Here is the difference between a solid coat of General Finishes and after sanding.

And here it is all done up! I went over the detail with Van Dyke Brown glaze just to give the distressed areas some depth and age.

I stained the top in 2 coats of Java Gel and sealed in Semi-gloss poly. The base was sealed in Satin HPTC. I just love how a new shiny top looks on this!