Stripping and refinishing an old dry sink with progress illustrations by Sandra Russell

I bought an old dry sink in an antique store about 18 years go. It was cute, painted black with sort of clear glass oversized knobs on it, which gave it an Art Deco 30's feel. Underneath however the wood seemed to be spoon carved with sort of primitive leaves, and I discovered that the knobs except for one on the door was not the original design, which had 21/2 " drop handle pulls. The holes for the pulls had been filled with wood putty and a new hole drilled in center for a knob.

Well, I thought, this poor thing should be restored to its original form, until I stripped it. I used a citrus stripping material which by the way works best if kept wet, so tip on that to you strippers, lay some plastic wrap over it and leave it a few hours. Don't be tempted to scrape too soon.

The first layer of paint (black) bubbled up like lava, and nearly removed itself. Voila! Got excited for a minute. The next layer, now in spots, still hard enamel, in others like a really thick bubble gum but also oily, really tough stuff. Hmm? Okay, put on more stripper, some plastic bread wrapper and walk away. Lucky move because that softened the layer of green under the white and helped to lift that off.

As I continued to scrape the globs of multicolor sludge and toss into the trash, I also found a friend in tsp (tri sodium phosphate) powder. This is a washing aid that eliminates much need for mineral spirit cleanup. I was dismayed to find that fine wood, such as oak or walnut was not the wood beneath all this, but instead a scorched and stained utility wood with little grain, likely poplar. I decided that the paint and knob repair was not as historically inaccurate as I previously thought, and decided to repaint it.

I found some opaque wood stain for below half price (a mis-tint at the paint store) it was a sort of green cast charcoal and went on like paint (water-based cleanup). I did the carvings later with an aqua green 'chalk paint' and decided to forgo the bail pull handles for some glass again knobs. This time the knobs are green and slightly smaller.

All this will go into the bathroom to store 'bathroom stuff'. I'll put a basket of nice towels on the top and a tray for bottles of witch-hazel, and that sort of daily used liquids to protect the top. 

Not sure if you will be stripping furniture in the near future, but if so, maybe this information will be helpful to some of you?