This past spring, my husband and I highjacked our family's traditional Easter celebrations at the family farm to announce that we were pregnant. It was a blast as we handed my parents a 2 foot nesting egg style Easter egg that had a sonogram in the final piece. After a moment of surprise and confusion, everyone was in on it and it was wonderful to celebrate together. I knew immediately that I wanted to ask my aunt if we could use her old crib, and all the girls were gracious enough to approve.
Luckily, my aunt also knew exactly where the old crib was and it wasn't buried too badly in one of the old storage sheds. We hauled it back to Austin and there it has sat, in the corner of our bedroom, for the past 4 months...waiting to be lovingly brought back to life. It's a beautiful Bassett crib made from Walnut and it has survived her 6 growing girls...but not without some scars. It was looking a little rough, so she told me I was welcome to paint it but there's absolutely no way I could bring myself to completely destroy the years of character it had worked so hard for.
Looks like some babies had a taste for walnut.
Since we finally decided to put the baby in her own nursery, got the room painted last weekend, it was time to start getting the crib ready. I started researching my options for restoring it. Sanding it down seemed just as destructive as painting and honestly too work intensive with all those little rails. I wanted to keep some of those old scars, but just polish her up a bit. I was walking around the hardware store looking for options when I stumbled upon a miracle pair!
This stuff worked wonders!!! First, I had to wash the crib down really well, get all the dust and cobwebs off (this took several wipe downs). Then I started working in the Restor-a-finish and watched the dings, gouges, and scuff marks dissapear. It wasn't quite as simple as just wiping the stuff on - I used the recommended Grade 0000 steel wool and had to really work the finish in to the roughest spots and really scrub scrub scrub some old paint scuffs. Just look at the before and after.
Before.
After.
After I worked the finish restorer all over the crib, in between every rung and my arms were jello...I had to clean it all again. There was some excess oil in places and some steel wool grime, so I wiped the whole thing down several more times with damp cloths. I wanted this sucker to be grime-free since grime and baby drool do not mix well. For the final step I added the wax all over, wiped off the excess and we're back in action! I am thrilled with the way the whole thing turned out - shiny, polished, but still well-loved.
Now we can start nesting into the room a little bit more. I reclaimed the bookshelf for baby and we're re-finishing some shelves, a freebie glider, among other projects. I really like using thrift store and hand-me-down finds because a) it's cost effective, b) it's eco-friendly, and c) it creates a room that is so much more interesting than a catalog. I will keep you up to date as these other projects begin to fill the room with life!
No comments:
Post a Comment