Thrifty Frames and Bye Bye Veneer

Yesterday my mom and I went to a thrift store that was rumored to have the best furniture around. I saw a few nice things, but nothing spectacular and nothing in the price range that I was looking for. They did however have picture frames at the cheapest prices I've ever seen. I bought these two 8x10's for a total of $.60 (including tax). The one on the left was only $.06. Crazy!!! I really like the one on the right, but it was made with two different colors of wood (not sure if you can make it out in the pic, but you can see the separation line on the bottom towards the left).

So I decided to paint both in Sherwin Williams Mineral Deposit Interior paint. It's another one of my free grey paints, but this one has a bit of blue in it. The left frame I finished with some Briwax that contains a dark brown stain in it.

The right frame was finished with regular Briwax. I actually think the inner layer of the frame was leather, but it was dirty to begin with so I didn't mind painting over it.

I really like how the grey turned out on these! Can't wait to put new pictures in them for little Annie to look at.

And I can't believe it myself, but I got the veneer off my curbside dresser! You might remember the top of the dresser started out like this:

 And yesterday I left it at this:

Well after taking a putty knife and a hammer to it tonight, I got it all off in about 15 minutes! No iron needed! I figure that's some kind of record. I think I got lucky though, the veneer was desperate to get off.

The first drawer is missing a little bit of veneer, but my plan is to sand it down and paint over it instead of tearing it all off. The second drawer however was not as fortunate. 1/3 of the veneer was gone, so I took the rest off. The stuff was so thin and crackly, it was almost like paper.

And here it is all naked without the veneer. Woo-hoo! It wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. But I know it's because my dresser was in such terrible shape and had been neglected for a long time. Water and humidity got to the veneer and essentially made my job easier. 

Now I don't think the last two drawers will be going back into the dresser. Not only is there a lot of veneer missing, there's also a lot of wood missing underneath that. No amount of sanding will help. Instead I plan to make two open shelves and put some baskets in there. What a shame though. I forgot to show you before, but this is why the dresser is my best "FREE" find.

Dovetail joints! Eh...now I'm thinking I can find a way to save the drawers. I keep changing my mind! We'll see. For now, I'm using one of them to collect all the veneer I've pulled off!

Lovely ain't it?

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