I woke up early Saturday to beat the heat for my long run and then was instantly mesmerized like a child while watching a huge helicopter remove and replace AC units on a building near mine. As a result, the run was delayed 45 minutes. But it was totally worth it!
I ended up running 14 miles in 2 hours- one of my longest runs this year. It was hot. But felt really good to sweat. The path was crowded but not too bad. I took one salt tab around mile 7 and water from the fountains. Gu/carb loading are seriously overrated. (In my opinion). Try running long without carb loading the night before or try not taking any GU during a long run. See what happens, I dare you.
Totem waaaay north of my place.
When I returned from my run, I had one major goal: to refinish my new ikea dressers
I had put the 3 "Rast" dressers together the night before.
After getting a super yummy iced mocha drink from Caribou post run, it was refinish all the dressers time!
my basket of dresser refinishing supplies- Cheesecloth for applying stain, ebony stain, gloves, brushes for the polyurethane, sandpaper, tact cloth for removing debris and paint thinner.
The stain went on easy. It was just time consuming for the 3 dressers and 9 drawers.
After 1 coat.
Every 2 hours I would put another coat of stain on, for a grand total of 3 coats.
after 3 coats
Then I was exhausted. And it was time to let the stain dry over night before applying the polyurethane.
Sunday I took the CB dog on a run. It was hot and we ran/walked. He was enjoying himself immensely. I love seeing my little man so happy!
After our run it was time to finish the dresser project. I had to sand the dressers/drawers and then use the tact cloth to get all the dust/debris off of the surface before applying the polyurethane.
CB passed out and I was jealous.
After applying one coat, I let it sit for a while. Once it was dry, I decided one coat was enough. (Mainly because it looked nice and because I was done with this project!)
The finished product!!
I bought some stainless steel knobs (also from Ikea) to complete the look. But, I didn't buy enough (thought there was one knob per drawer instead of 2) so the final 4 drawers will get their knobs this week when the extra ones arrive.
All in all it was a good project for a weekend. I am very happy with how the dressers came out and am already thinking about more projects like this to do in the future. While this project wasn't difficult at all, it was very time consuming.
Overall cost:
$35 per dresser at Ikea
$60 worth of supplies to refinish them.
$5 per 2 knobs from ikea
Priceless- my time.
The average cost per dresser ended up being around $70.
I wanted these to be simple- dark stain to match our other furniture and better knobs than the stock knobs that came with the set.
There are loads of pages on the Internet devoted to "Ikea Hacks" which show you how to take boring Ikea furniture and turn it into something amazing, if you're into doing a project like this.
- xaar
