Nesting Nut

The first thing I thought of when moving into my first apartment was my bed. I love my bed at home, but I’d need another one for my apartment. I didn’t really want to buy a new one, I thought this would be the perfect opportunity for a refinishing project!

So, I went searching through my basement and asking my family what they wanted to get rid of. Turns out we had a wooden bed frame from my great-grandmother’s house just sitting in the basement, waiting for this project.

So, what we had to start with was a stained maple bed frame from around the 60’s (although we aren’t entirely sure). We did some searching on Pinterest and found another DIYer who had done something similar to what we wanted. We used her process as a guide and jumped right in! Check out her post here.

Step 1: Stripping the wood

This step was messy! Mom had to work that day so I was left to do it all by myself (that’s a lot of trust). The materials I used were a furniture stripper, a plastic scraper, and a stripping pad (to remove the excess residue).

I used an inexpensive paint brush to coat the stripper on the wood. It’s important to make sure you put a thick layer on to remove all of the layers. The messy part comes after waiting 15 minutes. After 15 minutes use the plastic scraper to remove as much of the mess as possible. I had to repeat this process on most of the surfaces of the bed frame as there were some tough spots. All together this process took about 2.5 hours so it was easily done in a morning.

Step 2: After a quick sanding the next step was to whitewash the wood. To do this we mixed white paint and water. I wish I could tell you the ratio, of water to paint, but since mom has some experience whitewashing we just mixed it up until it was the consistency we wanted. It took a couple of tries but we got the look we wanted pretty quickly. In the end, we painted the paint/water mixture, let it set for 15 minutes, then wiped it off with a rag.

Step 3: We waited overnight, then moved onto step three. This step was the easiest and quickest. We simply applied a dark wood stain with a cotton rag, waited approximately 1 minute before wiping it off with another cotton rag. For this step it was helpful to have both my mom and myself; she applied the stain, and I followed behind her wiping it off.

Easy as 1,2,3! Done!

Check back for some more DIY’s as I settle into my new apartment.