Reporter Catherine Musgrove takes on a furniture project - which very nearly goes disasterously wrong.
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00:00I am impulsive and impatient and when I see articles like that I just want to have a go
00:06so I had some kind of dated spare bedside tables in a spare room so I
00:13wanted to achieve this look on my own, cheaply.
00:19And here I am at B&Q buying some wood dye and some floor coverings and some sponges.
00:31Bought from Scar Top Pioneer Bamber Bridge that's no longer there. On the back it says
00:382015 so I'm guessing we bought it nine years ago when we moved into our last house. We've
00:45since moved and fashions changed, tastes changed. Very orangey on the top, it still looks quite
00:52orange. I put a little bit of a whitewash on that and I did change the knobs so I'm
01:00keeping them but all of this is going to change. So I bought a sander and I'll put a picture
01:06of that, what I've just bought this morning, only a cheap one, and I'm going to see how
01:10easy it is, or indeed how difficult it is, to completely change the look of this. I've
01:16got two of them, I'm going to go with one, see if I ruin it or not.
01:25This side that's kind of been done, I started on the side in case it was awful and it wasn't
01:33straight on the front. It's taken about half an hour. I'm not going to lie, that is slower
01:39than what I expected but I think it's because these sandpaper attachments, they go on like
01:45a velcro fitting. I don't think that the grit is big enough, it's coarse enough. I think
01:52it's too fine and if I had a more coarse sandpaper I think this would be a much easier job. So
02:00for number two I'll be investing in some different pads but it's looking okay. Right, so to get
02:06to this stage where it's not perfect, I know, it's taken about two and a half hours. I've
02:14taken the knobs off, I'll put them back on when it's done. I'm going to give it a wood
02:19dye now with a sponge. I am going for a bit of a whitewashed look so there is some white
02:28paint still on there but it's not too bad. To be honest with you that's as far as I can
02:34be bothered taking it. Yeah, at this point I had a massive panic and rushed off to my
02:39nearest hardware shop to get some sanding paper to sand it all back in case my husband
02:45got home and wanted a divorce. So after quite a bit of sanding back and finishing with some
02:53liming wax to try and whiten it off, this is how it was left. I wasn't happy, it was
03:00very blotchy and I realised that I should have put some more time into the preparation
03:05and getting some more of that paint off. Back again, I'll be in queue. Frustrated with the
03:12paint that wasn't coming off from around the crevices in the drawer, I bought some wire
03:17brush and scraper, I bought some white primer and I bought some more sanding pads.
03:31I'd sanded it back as far as I could, then I put the primer on. I very quickly tried
03:36to wipe off quite a lot of the primer so it was just a white wash, then I reapplied some
03:41more of the wood dye and this is what it looks like in the end. So would I do it again? Well
03:46yes, I'm going to have to because there's two bedside tables and I've got to have them
03:50matching. It was way more difficult than I thought, way more time consuming. Definitely
03:56do it outside because inside you're going to get loads of dust everywhere and also you
04:03don't want to be breathing it in. You're going to have to take knobs off, hinges off, it's
04:09not something to do on a whim. I think that's what I've learnt. I've not done it perfectly,
04:15I've got it to a point that I'm happy with it.