YAY for Power Tools!

Yesterday was sunny and a perfect day to start my April project. My dad gave me my grandma's 1938 Singer sewing machine, in the original cabinet. I LOVE this machine! My only problem is that the cabinet has several water rings and scratches and needs to be completely refinished. This is not something I'm willing to tackle on my own, for fear that I will ruin the cabinet. I found out that refinishing furniture is not cheap...AT ALL. I don't want to cause any more damage, sooooo.....I was on a mission to find another cabinet to use (that doesn't have sentimental value) so that I can keep the original cabinet safe until I can afford to have it professionally refinished. Lucky for me, Matt has good eyes, and he spotted an old sewing cabinet at a barn sale last month. $5 for machine and cabinet! YAY!! Both were in horrible condition though; the machine doesn't even work. But 5 bucks for a cabinet - right on! So now my project: sanding and staining/painting. Yikes!

Fortunately, Matt, tired of being cooped up all winter, was pretty quick to jump on the sanding outside. He did the whole top (both sides of it) and door.

After that, he showed me how to do it myself. LOL sanding gets old quick! First I had to go over the whole table by hand with 50-grit to get the finish off. Then, I used a palm sander on the whole thing, one time with the 50-grit and then finally with150-grit. Here are some before and after pics - from nasty and dirty, to almost ready to be stained:

My goal is to stain the table light blue, but if it turns out that I'm horrible at staining, then I will just paint it a light dusty blue. Here is the stain that I like:

Let's just hope that this crappy table doesn't fall completely apart on me!

Here's the machine that came with it (doesn't work - still pretty cool though):

YESTERDAY I LEARNED...how to use a palm sander.

Oh! And a follow-up about my custom order - she wants to keep the bags! : ))