Better Late Than Never

So, sometime last June, we bought an unfinished media console from one of our new favorite furniture stores in Hampton Roads, GoodWood. I love this place because everything they sell is solid wood, and they sell a bunch of furniture that is unfinished, meaning that not only do you save some money on the pieces (which you know I'm all about), but you also get to decide for yourself what color to stain the piece and how to make it your own. 

Anyway, here's a photo of the console right after we bought it. We figured it would take us just a couple weeks to find the time to stain it. 

.....And here it is 8 months later, looking EXACTLY the same. 

We finally bit the bullet this past weekend and decided it was the day to finally get this sucker stained. We'd already bought all our materials, so we didn't think a trip to the hardware store would be involved. WRONG. Once we cleaned it out and moved it downstairs to our empty "project" room (aka our formal living room that we STILL don't have furniture for), we noticed a crack in the front of one of the drawers. Nooooooo! 

I did some quick googling, and discovered that all we needed was some stainable wood filler, a putty knife, and, as it turned out, some patience, to get our project back on track. So, once we got back home with the needed materials, I got to work.

It's a fairly straight-forward process. You fill in the crack with stainable wood filler, let it dry for an hour or so, and then sand it until it's smooth. I took this photo before I sanded it down. 

Once I got that under my belt, I was ready to go back to my regularly scheduled project. We decided on an "English Chestnut" stain color, and went with a water-based poly for our top coat. I debated going one shade darker on the stain color, and I'm SO glad I didn't. This color was plenty dark enough, as you'll see. 

After only one coat of stain, the cabinet was already a rich brown, which is what I was hoping for. So--cha-ching! Less coats = more better. 

I was really pleasantly surprised by how well the stainable wood filler worked. Here's the cracked drawer, and you can't even tell where the original crack was. 

And here it is after two coats of poly were added. Make sure, if you do this, to sand between coats of poly. I didn't on our other piece that I stained, and I regret it. It leaves the surfaces a bit rough instead of that milky smooth wood finish that I wanted. Luckily, I learned from that mistake and did quite a bit of sanding between coats on this piece. It makes a huge difference.

(Note: my herb garden seedlings are in the background, which was another project I tackled this weekend. All this cold weather has gotten me ITCHING for Spring!)

All-in-all, this was a really easy project that made a huge difference in how the piece looks in the room. We were really happy with how it turned out! I'm still toying with the idea of switching out the knobs for "cooler" ones, but that is an easy fix that I'll likely put off for awhile longer so we can tackle some other projects in the house. 

Another "Year of the House" project under our belt!