Cleaning, Prepping, and Sanding

That is basically how I spent my whole day.  Cleaning, prepping, and sanding a dresser/buffet. 
Remember how a long, long time ago (January to be specific) I had scored two antique dressers off of Craigslist for $50 each? (If you want to see what they looked like when I bought them go HERE and scroll to the end.)  I had planned on redoing them and keeping one and possibly selling the other.  But, winter and painting don’t seem to mix well, so I procrastinated working on the long dresser until today. 
With my new found motivation to go to the gym, and just get more exercise in, I felt like today I should go outside and accomplish something.  I removed all the drawers from the dresser and then I pulled the dresser out from our garage, into our driveway and started working on it. 

The first thing I had to do was clean it.  It was nasty, and had yucky, weird, dried but greasy crap on it. (Not actual crap, at least I hope not, but some kind of brownish residue.) 

I cleaned it using TSP (The box says to mix 2 gallons of warm water with a 1/2 cup of TSP and let it dissolve. I only had a big plastic bowl I could work with so I did about a gallon of water with a 1/4 of a cup of TSP instead.) 

I wore gloves, and used a regular kitchen sponge to clean the dresser with. 

I worked in sections, so that after I was done cleaning it with the TSP solution and sponge I could dry it off with paper towels. I didn’t want the water to soak into the wood so I thought that was a logical solution.

After cleaning the dresser off, I then prepped it by filling any holes or deep enough scratches and gouges with wood filler. 

Apparently the person who owned it before me, had the initials K.A. and really liked asterisks?
Once the wood filler dried I sanded the filled in spots and the whole dresser with 220 sand paper.  I sanded it mostly to get any final dirt off of it, and to smooth out any rough edges or chipped paint.

After the whole thing was sanded I then vacuumed it all over.

I like vacuuming the excess dust off that comes from sanding, it takes most of it off.  And the stuff that it doesn’t get will come off when I wipe it down with wet ones.  (I use Kirkland baby wipes to do that since we have an abundance of them.I have a dream that one day there will be no more diapers!)

Now she’s ready to be primed!  Which I will be posting about tomorrow, so come back okay?

You can read about my first experience Painting with Annie Sloan Chalk Paint
Or you can read about my first experience Using Annie Sloan's Clear Soft Wax
Or you can skip to the finished product Annie Sloan Buffet Makeover

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