My New Bed

Or at least new to me. My brother gave me this old bed over a year ago that they had decided they didn’t have the patience to refinish. But someone had started to use a stripping agent on the headboard. It had some build up on it from where they tried to strip it previously but didn’t get all the agent removed.

I ended up using CitraStrip to get most of the old stuff off. Lots of stripping and hours of sanding later I uncovered beauty.

But no matter that I used steel wool with the stripper, or that I even tried flexible sandpaper, I could not get the grooves clean. I even thought about just painting the posts black. I really wanted to keep it this natural.

I ended up getting General Finishes gel stain, knowing it would cover it all anyway. They didn’t have as light of color as I wanted, so I went with one that looked really good on both of their samples. Once I used it, I thought it was too orange. So days after staining, I then painted the whole piece with a light grey. Only one coat. Then I lightly sanded. Then I got out a grey and a brown stain. I sponge on my stain and then wipe off with a cloth. Working on big sections at a time, I did a patch of grey and then while it was still damp, I did the same with the brown. The resulting color is a greyish driftwood look. And I love it (just not as much as I loved the natural color). Then I sprayed the whole thing with Varanthe. I didn’t like the texture of that so I waxed both pieces after. (All in all, this took me like 9 months.) Eventually, both of those tables will be different colors as well and I will finish painting from the bluer color to the grey.

Because this is an old bed, it doesn’t fit both a pillowy mattress and a box spring, so we treated this as if it were a platform bed. Boards are under the mattress. It’s very sturdy but still a little small for this type of mattress. It is extremely hard to make the bed.

I want to get rid of the foot board to make it easier to make and it is not all so cramped, but it is also a frame so to speak. The footboard and headboard are attached together with metal sides. Not sure exactly what to do.