Tallboy makeover.

Saturday and Sunday were beautiful days. In the morning I walked to Bunnings, bought sandpaper, and then around the middle of the day I spent 2.5 hours or so sanding. The first day was discouraging, because I thought a sander would just scrape the lacquer off in 2 goes, like icing off a cake. I had to buy coarser sandpaper on Sunday and also one specifically for removing paint, and then I had more success. But still, it was really slow going. Sanding is slow, that is its nature.

Here is the before, the shiny orange honey colour:

This is the result I got on Saturday with medium coarse sandpaper. The sander had a bag so it contained a lot of the dust, but I did it in the bathroom to contain the dust as much as possible. Unfortunately it amplified the noise. Sorry, neighbours. Anyway, this was discouraging because all my work only got half of it off.

This is the finished result on Sunday with coarse sandpaper. I'm much happier.

I'd say there is still at least 10% remaining I could take off, but I hope this is good enough.
This is the sort of brown I wish it to be when I stain it.

Before I did this work, I had to remove all the stuff in the drawers and put it into green bags. Actually seeing the bottom of the drawers was an interesting experience. This is a shot of the sock drawer after I took out the socks, stockings, ribbons and bangles. Quite interesting treasures. A 1964 australian penny, a blue rock, a leather papoose baby necklace, chopsticks, my first watch. The undies drawer was even more interesting and a lot deeper, there were old greeting cards and my red P licence and about 4 lost prescriptions and a bird whistle and a ponytail of hair and some tiny photo frames and more.

I'm looking forward to eventually putting back the things that should be in the drawers, i.e. clothes, and then have fun sorting/throwing out the rest.