Varnish Be Gone!

I hate shinny wood. Why would you take something with so much texture and detail and goop it into a grainless, artificial mess? Varnish is the bane of good looking furniture. I have such a piece of furniture that was ruined by thick layers of varnish; the dresser I have had since I was a kid. Recently unemployed (for two days...which seems like an eternity) and not in school, I had time to bring back the dresser from varnishdom.

Supplies:
I bought a thing of metallic paint so that I could turn the door knobs into metal looking pulls
Varnish remover. The varnish remover I got was in a spray can. Bad idea.

The Process:

The stuff just streamed out like silly string all over and never in an even amount. I had to do this outside in the freezing cold because the stuff was so toxic it recommended wearing gloves to keep your skin on your hands. Eventually, after the dresser was starting to look like someone scribbled varnish remover on it, I started spraying the stuff and then spreading it out with a cloth. Spreading it out made the stuff much less efficient and thus this project took 3x as long as I thought it would.
Once I had gotten the varnish off, I then took a dark stain to it. It takes stain a couple of days to set in by the way, I learned that the hard way with my desk.

Then the drawer pulls:
So, turns out you cannot just spray this stuff and expect it to look like brass. After a little experimenting, I spray painted the knobs black and then put a little of the metallic over that. Once the knobs were completely dry, I sanded the metallic paint until it dulled down enough to look like a real metal.

Finally, I decided to add some numbers to the drawers. I took stencils I already had, lined the letter and numbers up and dabbed a cotton ball dipped in black paint over the stencil.

Today I would say it was worth the effort...I doubt I would have said so in the middle of it all:)