Refinished Oak Server

I have to admit that this is a bit of an older project, but I have never shared it on here.  I love painting furniture, but I also love the look of natural wood... in fact a lot of my own furniture is unpainted. I bought this piece the beginning of last summer at an auction for a song. ($20.00!!!)

This is sort of what it looked like before I stated stripping paint off.  I had already started before I remembered to take a picture...and I wasn't even blogging way back then, but my parents wanted me to email them a picture.  Whoever owned it before had painted it an (ugly) pale creamy-yellow and outlined the drawers and backsplash in a bluey-green color. Once I started to remove the paint, I was excited to see the lovely quarter sawn oak underneath. 

(You'll have to forgive the ugly wall behind it... I was also removing wallpaper from that room...(By the way, don't paint over your wallpaper... it just makes it harder to remove in the long run!))

 It was extremely difficult to remove the paint from the crevices of these feet!  But, there's not one speck of paint left in them now!  I found a little wire bush was extremely handy for this.  And, not sure whether I should have done this or not... but I sometimes used a needle to flick paint out of the crevices. 

This is one of my favourite pieces of furniture that I own.  I think it took me about 25-30 hours from start to finish.  After I was done stripping it, I put on one coat of stain to even out the wood tone and then I put on three coats of polyurethane, sanding lightly with an extremely fine sandpaper in between.

And yes, I have some Christmas decorations up already.  My tree is not up yet, though by the end of next week, it will be :-)    

As seen on Apartment Therapy HERE

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