Teen Bedroom Makeover: Week 4 Furniture Refinishing

We’ve made it to week four of our fall 2019 One Room Challenge – a teen bedroom makeover. This week we finished the closet floor and thresholds and started on furniture refinishing.

The One Room Challenge

We’re on week four of the One Room Challenge! Check out Week 1 Planning to see what we’re tackling for this six week home decor project and follow along through each post in this series. Be sure to check out the rest of the bloggers and designers on the One Room Challenge blog.

After the big changes of the last two weeks, this week’s progress will probably seem pretty small. It’s kind of like when you’re reading a novel and there’s rising action, then everything sort of goes sideways and the hero has to stop and decide how to move forward.

But we actually made a lot of progress this past weekend, even if we didn’t check a lot of items off of our to-do list.

Finished closet floor

The first thing we did was pick up where we left off last weekend. We used the same method to install underlayment and laminate wood flooring in the closet. It’s not a big closet – about 5×5 – but big enough that it took a good portion of our day.

After the floors were done, we tackled the thresholds for the bedroom-to-closet and bedroom-to-hallway.

My husband made a template for the closet threshold so that we could just continue the same planks all the way across. The middle strip is called a T-joint. It took a long, long time to get precise but in the end, it looks really nice and tidy.

Bedroom threshold

For the bedroom-to-hallway threshold, we needed to do something a bit different. The rest of the upstairs is still carpet. While I’m really pumped to pull it all up and do the laminate wood flooring in the other bedrooms, it will have to wait.

That’s honestly the best and worst thing about DIY projects. It motivates me to do more projects, but I also get impatient that we can’t do everything at once.

So to do the threshold here and in the closet, we screwed down the metal base piece and then tapped the T-join into place. The hard part for the hallway was getting that carpet to pinch down under it.

This part is temporary because eventually, we will replace the hallway carpet. I don’t know exactly when we’re doing it, though, so it needs to be functional for now.

Furniture refinishing

Refinishing the furniture was supposed to be our big project for this week, but the closet floor and thresholds took a full day.

As a recap, we are refinishing a vintage Drexel bedroom set that belonged to my husband’s grandparents. Each piece was in a different stage of being sanded and painted when it came to us. My goal is to restore it closer to its original appearance.

We decided to start with a paint remover, which does a decent job of getting the green paint and lacquer off of each piece. It is tedious, though, and getting into every little groove and chip takes some detail.

After the paint remover, my husband sanded each piece. It has to be done lightly because there is veneer.

Then, he brushed on a few coats of Rust-Oleum Stain and Polyurethane in American Walnut. The stain covers a lot of the damage and unevenness of the sanded wood.

After the stain dried completely, it looks pretty close to the original wood color and texture.

We couldn’t finish the whole bedroom set in a day, so we still have that on our to-do list for week 5. The dresser and vanity are both pretty heavy, so I’ve tried to figure out how we can refinish them without carrying them downstairs. I think we may end up doing that, though, just so we don’t have to smell it for days.

Follow along on our teen bedroom makeover!

Week 1: Planning | Week 2: Paint | Week 3: Flooring
Week 4 (you’re here) | Reveal

What’s next? Try these other fun and creative ideas on One Mama’s Daily Drama:

• Quick Thrift Store Lamp Makeover
• Pineapple Stencil Wall Art Tutorial
• DIY Book Box