Living Room: Before and After

The living room is finally "done". I use the quotes because I still have to refinish the door, clean the windows, and remove the horrible 80's door-thingee from the front of the fireplace.

I also realized that I started this project in fall of 2009, which is ridiculous. I used the same process as the dining room: 2 coats of dye stain, 2 coats of shellac (50:50 mix of amber shellac and alcohol), glaze with Old Masters Dark Walnut Gel stain, 1 more coat of shellac, and finally a layer of dark brown Briwax.

Here are a couple things I learned during this project

• If you decide to use an alcohol based dye stain, you have to be very careful with the first coat of shellac to avoid pulling up the dye and causing streaks. The best advice I can give is to start with an extremely light coat of shellac so the alcohol flashes off quickly to avoid pulling up the dye.
• Taping windows for refinishing is a waste of time.
  

BeforeAfter

BeforeAfter
Before (note the popcorn ceiling)After

Resorting to Chemicals

I think I have removed about as much paint from the crown molding as I can with the Silent Paint Remover.
I really wish they made a smaller version that I could fit into corners. I am now resorting to chemicals. Last time I used a less toxic chemical stripper I tried Ready Strip. Unfortunately, I wasn't thrilled with it, so this time I am giving Soy Gel a shot. I am starting with a less toxic stripper since the room has pretty much no ventilation right now. I am starting in one corner just to see how it does. If it fails, I may just put it off until spring and resort to Zip Strip. Once I get most of the paint off, I am going to go back through with "furniture restorer" (thanks to Shane for his suggestion in an earlier post). One thing that makes stripping the woodwork easier is that it all seems to have been originally finished in Shellac, which is really easy to remove. I will be refinishing it in shellac if I ever make it to that point.

In the meantime, I have been messing with something that has bugged me since we moved in, the gouges in the floor in the doorway to one of our bedrooms. My theory is that the whole house was carpeted at some point and that it wasn't removed all at once. As a result, the floor was sanded and refinished at different times. The other option is that someone really half-assed it. Regardless, I started sanding it to see if I could just get it to be less obvious. In the end, the stain proved tough to match (I probably should have cleaned up the sanding dust around it before taking the picture as well). I think the issue was that the floors are just the natural oak and the surface finish has darkened over time. My best guess is that it is polyurethane of some sort. It's not perfect, but at least it isn't an obvious gouge any more.