I used a short term car rental service to transport the bookshelf, super easy. The bookshelf was heavy enough to make me think it was solid wood. I bartered with a friend to have him remove the existing finish, which turned out to just be some stain. There was no polyurethane or finishing oil to strip off. While sanding down the bookshelf he discovered that the "solid oak" of the sides and front casing was really a high quality thick oak veneer over particleboard. Although cerusing is not recommend for veneers I decided to carry on with the original plan. Here is the bookshelf after being sanded down to remove the stain.
Next step was to dye the wood, using the blue aniline dye I purchased. The initial dye layer looked green, probably because of the yellowness of the oak. (Next time I will try to bleach the oak before dying, if that's even possible). After 3 rounds of dying and drying the color looked blue, and I was satisfied. Although in retrospect it might have been better to do another round, because after applying the shellac the color looked green again.
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| (top half) Dyed blue veneer with shellac layer on top, (bottom half) dyed blue layer. |
I like greens, blues, and teal, so while this was not the bright cobalt blue I was going for, it didn't stop the project! To improve the strength of the finish I applied two coats of shellac to the horizontal surfaces and outside faces of the bookshelf. This worked out to about 1.5 cans of shellac.
After the shellac dried it was time to apply the liming wax, and to learn a lesson about not following directions.
I did a test run of the wax on one of the removable shelves, by wiping on the wax, working it into the grain and then immediately wiping of the excess with #000 steel wool. This was easy enough and the results looked normal. Then I made the mistake of reading the directions on the tin, which said to let the wax dry for AN HOUR before wiping or sanding off the excess. So that's what I did. Maybe that works if you want an overall whitewashed finish and just want to smooth the surface with a bit of light sanding, but for cerusing over dyed wood this was a huge mistake. The wax got really hard and was difficult to remove with #000 steel wool through hand sanding.
With a lot of elbow grease I eventually sanded, or buffed, all the surfaces down so that the grain was filled in but without a white haze over the rest of the wood. A day later I applied clear furniture wax to help seal and protect the surface even further. The furniture wax was easy to wipe on and buff to a shine, and it smelled good too. The instructions on that product say to let the waxed surface 'cure' for 30 days before any heavy use. That sounds like a long time, but given how long it takes me to reorganize anything or move furniture around in my apartment I think it will be fine. In the meantime I've been admiring the naked bookshelf in it's new colorful state.
This is what a naked shelfie looks like.
If you're interested in cerusing something, go for it! It is a bit more involved than a one-coat paint job, but the intricacy and richness of the final finish are worth it.
Happy freestyling, keep an eye on your local craigslist free section!