refinishing the bench

When will I learn?! That's rhetorical by the way, as I think I am beyond help.

Ever since I wrote about the glory that is unpainted wood furniture (here), I've had a hankering to add some, somewhere. And since I've got extra furniture three rows deep in the basement, I figured buying something wasn't the way to go.

Luckily I've been eyeing my church pew. I've been thinking of changing the red for some time, as I talked about here, so why not go with the color it was originally meant to be anyway.

In theory anyway.

Quick history on the pew, it came from the small country chapel that my great-great-grandfather founded long long ago. My mom acquired it back in the early 80's when they renovated the chapel and at that time it was painted brown. Why in the world would someone paint wood furniture brown? That's exactly what I was thinking too! Anyway, she promptly painted it red and it has been that way ever since. The point being no one that I know knew what type of wood this was or how it would look.

I love to solve a good mystery so I tested a little spot with my Citristrip just to see what I was getting into. If it looked bad I could paint that spot again or worse yet just put a pillow over it.

What a tease. It was worse than Ryan Seacrest before a commercial break. It was all, oh, I'm bubbling right away, I'll come up with no problem. And the first layer did.

That's right, I said first layer. But it was the layer, upon layer, upon layer of brown...paint/natural stain/mystery McGuyver substance that wouldn't. go. away.

I don't really have any pictures of this phase as its hard to take a picture while banging you head but basically each day started with 'I'm sure this will be the last layer of brown goop, I can do this' and ended with 'Who in lucifer's reach made this #%$^!!!'.

This went on for a week.

It was the worst as it looked as if there wasn't any paint there but when I scraped off the Cirtristrip there was more and more dark brown goo. I never did find out what it was but I got as much off as I could.

I used my last bit of energy to sand and then I stopped. The bench and I needed some time apart.

Have you ever underestimated a DIY project? Have you wanted to beat a piece of furniture? Do you have any idea what that brown goop could have been?

Come back next week when we see how the old girl looks now.