China Cabinet Complete!

It's done!  I think everyone is tired of us talking about refinishing our China cabinet. Well, our 7 month project has come to an end!

My grandparents bought us most of the China for our wedding, so we wanted to display it in a China cabinet.  My friend, Lisa, refinished a China cabinet for her Dining Room, and I always thought it looked really nice, so I thought that we would do the same.  We purchased our China cabinet from Craigslist, and we wanted to refinish it to a more modern look and to match our dining room table. 

My Aunt Patty had refinished her cabinets and built-in shelves in her house with a dark stain that looked fantastic, so we received advice from her to purchase a wood stripper, stripper remover, wood conditioning treatment, a stain, and then a polyurethane.  It was quite a process! 

We thought the wood stripper would easily strip off the original color and finish, but it took several weekends, well let's be honest, several months for us to get off the stain finish and sand it down.  We started off hand sanding, and then borrowed my Dad's hand sander, which helped immensely, and Greg completed the sanding in a couple weekends.

We first started the project in our garage where I volunteered to park outside because we thought we would finish the project in a couple weeks with the nice fall weather.  After a couple months of parking outside and colder weather moving in, I convinced Greg that we move it down to the bathroom in our basement, and that is where he completed the sanding.  Then, it was onto staining.

Staining wasn't all that bad.  It took several coats to get it to a color that we liked and to match our table.  It wasn't the cleanest project for the small basement bathroom.  Stain was splashed on the walls in areas, so look for that bathroom on a future project of ours!  I also found out the hard way that stain penetrates through plastic drop cloths.  Everyone at my work knew this... and somehow I have never heard of it.  We used some CLR to get the stain off the tile, and I found out the next day that this is some pretty powerful mix.  We ended up having a new look on our tile by accidentally taking off the finish in areas.  We are lucky because it actually looks okay.

We finally took an afternoon off work and completed the staining, and Greg did all of the polyurethane.  Greg installed 3 new lights in the top.  My parents bought us new glass shelves and mirrors to install on the back.  Greg's Mom gave me the hammered metal bowl and trays that I placed in the cabinet to illuminate the light.  Once we started organizing the glasses and plates, I realized that the plates are too wide to fit in the middle because of the wood support going down the back, so I have to put the place setting off to one side. 

We're happy with the end result, and the pictures don't do it justice, so you will have to come see it your yourself.  Greg thinks he is ready for the next staining project, but I think I'll wait for a while.