Lazy Girl’s Guide to Refinishing Wood

I hope yall had a great weekend!

I was able to make some progress in the Guest Room this weekend. We painted the ceiling, walls and trim. There’s a very good chance that I killed thousands of brain cells with all those paint fumes. Here’s how the room looks now:


The paint color is Valspar’s Stormy Cove. As it was going on, I really thought I was going to hate it. But I love it.  It’s like a grown up blue versus a little boy blue. It looks super dark in the picture above but it's a good bit lighter than that. You can see a more accurate idea of the color in the pictures below.

Plus, yesterday I spent some time refinishing the bed and dresser in that room. Most of the furniture going in this room is from my room growing up. However, all those years have left the bed looking less than brand new:


Beautiful, right?
I did NOT want to refinish this whole thing, so I did the next best thing:
Lazy Girl’s Guide to Wood Refinishing

You’ll need:

• super fine steel wool (grade 000 or 0000)
• Howard Restor-A-Finish
• Howard Feed-n-Wax
• Latex gloves
• 2 old rags
• paper towels

1. Give the entire surface a good cleaning with the steel wool. This will not scratch the wood. It just cleans off grime and barely scuffs the surface.
2. Using gloves and an old rag, pour some of the Restor-a-Finish on the rag.

3. Rub it generously into the wood with the grain. Make sure to get into any ridges, scratches and details.
4. Let sit for at least 30 minutes. Then use a paper towel to wipe off any excess. Your wood should already look a million times better.
5. Onto the other old towel, generously squirt out the Feed-n-Wax (what a weird name, right?). This stuff smells amazing because it has Orange Oil in it. Rub it into the wood with the grain.
6. Let sit for at least 30 minutes and then rub off excess with a paper towel.
Before:

After:

Before:

After:


Crazy difference, right?

Did you get projects done this weekend or did you enjoy the beautiful spring weather?