A New Old Bed

This post is for my mom and her sisters.  :)

About 5 years ago, my mom and her sisters went through the huge task of cleaning out my grandparents' house and preparing it to sell.  This was the only house that my grandparents ever lived in, so you can imagine the amount of "treasures," as we call them, that were packed into this house. 

As a result, my cousins and I all had the opportunity to choose treasures that we wanted from the house.  Along with many other nice family heirlooms (and a few silly ones), I received a bedroom suit that my mom and her sisters had in their bedroom as kids.  It has 3 pieces all in a blonde finish: a bed frame, a desk, and a make-up vanity-like dresser.  (Is that what it is?  It's hard to describe)  We put the desk and vanity in our house and we put the bed frame in the attic.  Until last week.

This is before.  I hadn't touched the surface at all.

Vera has a big girl bed now, so we decided to get the frame down and use it in her bedroom.  Since it was blonde finish, I decided to refinish it before we put it in her room.

After some research, I bought this kit.  It has four steps and doesn't involve any sanding, priming or stripping.  You can choose from about 20 different finish colors, most of which are really pretty. It was $35 at Home Depot.  Seemed affordable and easy enough.  I measured my square footage and determined that I'd probably need 2 kits--$70 is still cheaper than buying a new bed frame.

I read the instructions a few times and got to work.  The first step is a deglosser.  It removes all the grease, grime and shiny finish.  It was hard work, requiring a lot of hard scrubbing and elbow grease.  Here it is--less shiny, but much cleaner.

As I scrubbed, I spent a lot of time thinking about the story this bed could tell.  If it could talk, what kinds of stories and experiences could this bed share?  I scrubbed off red crayon and wondered the story behind that.  I noticed a few drips of the peachy pink paint that was on the walls in the bedroom where this bed spent it's previous life.  I wondered who slept in this bed.  There were a few dents and dings, all adding to the character and history of this furniture.

 

I also tried to figure out how old this bedroom suit must be.  I figured at least 50 years old, and then I discovered this:

I'm not sure if I'm just "making this up," but I'm going to guess this refers to either 1-1-1960 or maybe 11-1960.  In January of 1960, Paul and Lucille were on their way to having three daughters.  In November of 1960, Paul and Lucille Bertke had 3 daughters--a 4 year-old, 2 year-old and a baby.  So around that time, the Bertkes could've very well purchased this furniture for their daughters' bedroom.  Maybe it's just some sort of ID number too.  There's no other markings on the bed indicating who manufactured the furniture.  But as it turns out, I was totally wrong about my assumption on the 1160.

Recently I talked to my mom and aunt Shorty.  I initially thought this bed was purchased by my grandparents, but I found out that it actually belonged to my great grandparents.  They bought it for one of their daughters--either my grandma Lucille or my great aunt Mary Ann.  When great grandma sold her farm, my grandparents got this bedroom suit.  To justify my calculations, if my grandma were alive today, she'd be 79 years old, so I'm going to say this bed is about 70ish years-old.  My mom was pretty sure that this bedroom suit served as a spare bed for most of the time it was at the Bertke residence.  It's pretty crazy to realize that this bedroom suit has been unused for so long--30 years, maybe 40 or 50?  For five years it's been in our attic.  And now, Ed and Viola May's great-great granddaughter is going to use the bedroom suit they purchased.  Kind of cool.

Back to the refinishing...
The second step is a bond coat.  It's kind of like paint.  I put it on in two coats with a paint brush. 
Here it is after coat 1:

It's pretty streaky.  Definitely needs another coat.

And after 2 coats:

 

I was happy with the progress up to that point.  I was a little worried about how it'd look with the paint brush strokes, but it was even and smooth with no streaks.

Then was step 3, a glaze coat.  I was really worried about this step because you have to brush this on, and then wipe it off.  I was afraid I wouldn't wipe it off evenly. 

That's when the major hiccup happened.  In a haste, I grabbed the wrong can.  It was actually step 4, the finish coat, instead of the third step.  The finish coat dries really fast.  I started brushing it on, and then I went to wipe it off and it was all rough and gooey-looking.  It didn't wipe off smooth at all.  Crap.  Then I saw the can.  I got this sick feeling in my stomach.  I went to get a wet rag and started to scrub off the layer before it completely dried.  Too late.  A lot of it was drying and didn't wipe off smoothly.  As I wiped, I started to wipe off the bond coat too in small chips.  The chips were down to the original finish.  I wanted to throw up.  I said a lot of bad words then almost cried.  Now what?!  The worst part?  It was on the headboard--at the top--right where everyone's eye will go.  Of course.  That's how my luck goes. 

I decided to strip the bond coat off and start over.  I got the deglosser out and started scrubbing.  It was such a mess.  The paint ran off every where.  I had brown goo running and smearing all over the headboard.  It was the 4th of July, raining and humid.  How would I get this to dry?  I scrubbed until my hands felt like they weighed 1000 lbs.  The varnish started flaking off.  I started worrying about stripping it down to the bare wood.  It says in the directions that this product doesn't work well on bare wood.  It had to be primed first.  Great.  I just wanted this project to turn out nice.  And, to make it worse, it was a family heirloom.  I decided to let it dry really well and see how it looked.  Plus, I needed to walk away from it before things got even worse.  Here's the screw up:

You can see how the varnish stripped off to make an uneven surface.  This isn't supposed to happen.

I took a chance and decided to try to redo the bond coat without priming it first.  It worked out to be just fine.  I put three coats of the espresso-colored bond coat on this part of the bedframe.  I was pleased with how it worked out. 

Next was step 3, the decorative glaze.  I double and triple checked the can before I started to make sure I had the right one.  Then I decided to start on the rails of the bed instead of the headboard.  This way it was an inconspicuous area, especially since I wasn't sure how this was going to go.  The glaze was tricky to work with.  It was very thin, which seemed uncharacteristic of the word "glaze."  I expected something thicker.  I brushed it on, and then used rags that were similar to cheese cloth to wipe off the excess.  I had to work in large areas with even and straight strokes.  Not easy.  I expected more of the wood grain to show through, but it didn't.  It mostly gave some texture to the finish.  At first I didn't like it, but it definitely grew on me.  I had to do a few touch-ups, but I was able to do only one coat of this step.

Finally came the protective finish step.  This step is similar to a varnish.  It really "made" the bed.  It put a shine on the bed, and made it smooth and professional-looking. 

 

We let the frame dry really well before we brought it in the house.  When we disassembled the bed to bring it in the house, the finish didn't scratch off anywhere.  Huge plus.  We put it up in Vera's room this evening.  She was so excited.  We were pretty shocked to realize how high off the ground this bed is.  I'm guessing in 1940 mattresses weren't as thick as they are today.

There's no way Vera can climb in the bed by herself.  Adam is thinking of how to make some sort of step to help her get in.  His comment was, "She's going to be 6 years-old before she can climb in the bed by herself!"  We weren't too concerned about her getting IN the bed alone, it is falling OUT that would be terrible.  Adam measured and the bed is 34 inches from the ground...almost 3 feet!  We decided that a safety rail would be essential.  Adam's parents had some extra rails, so it worked out well for us.  Here's the finished product, now known as "The Pink Bed."

All in all, I'm really happy with how the project turned out.  I'm considering refinishing the make-up vanity-like mirror to match.  I only used one of the kits that I purchased, and I can't return the second because the bond coat is tinted.  But for now, I'm going to take a break from refinishing projects!  Here's the "before" and "after..."