Some sugar soap, sanding, and the right paint gave this old buffet a new lease of life.
The project
I got this buffet for free on Facebook Marketplace and it needed quite a bit of work. The glass sliding doors weren’t exactly sliding, big chunks of veneer were missing from the sides, and it had a million layers of paint. And the cherry on top was this smell that tells you how old this buffet was. (I'll you at the end how I got rid of it).
Here is how and what I used for this makeover. I cleaned the piece really well using Selley’s sugar soap. I then got to sanding using my Ryobi orbital sander and look what I found.
There were layers and layers of paint, so I continued sanding until I got to the bare wood.
Tip: If you want to upcycle a piece of furniture that was unprofessionally painted, you’d want to remove all the old paint so your new paint can adhere well to the surface.
Once that was done, I filled up all the gouges caused by the missing veneer using Timbermate’s wood filler, waited for it to dry and sanded it smooth.
I then primed the entire piece using British Paints 4-in-1 primer followed by three coats of that beautiful burnt orange colour by Pureco. For the legs, I used Rust-Oleum spray paint in black and White Knight spray paint in gold.
For the shelves, I used this herringbone Boyle's adhesive paper from Bunnings, attached the new hardware and there you have it.
And to remove the bad smell, which was predominantly in the drawers, I wiped the insides with vinegar, let it dry in the sun and conditioned all the exposed wood with Gilly's Carnauba polish, which smells amazing.
Before and after
