Red Bed in My Head

Back in 2012, I was perusing Pinterest when I found this image of two low post beds.

I loved it so much that I decided to refinish a bed for my son, Carter. So that very day I looked on craigslist and found a bed with similar bones for $30. I went to look at it and I was like, um... I don't know about this. It was coated with thick, gloppy, drippy old white paint, which I knew was going to be a beast to remove. But I bought it anyway. Because it was $30 and I was up for the challenge. (And I am a total sucker for the underdog.)

Although I had refinished furniture in the past, this was going to be my very first experience with stripping a piece down to the original wood. I used one natural-type product to start, but it wasn't so great (maybe that's why it was on clearance) and so I switched to Citristrip after reading great things about it. Although it did a much better job, this is what it looked like after two rounds of Citristrip:

A totally hot mess.

It took me about two more rounds of stripper before the bulk of it was off, and THEN I started with the scrubber brush, scrubbing every little piece of gunky old paint off of it. At this point I was not a happy camper, but that vision of a red bed kept me going. Oh, and then after the white was removed, I had to get the original stain off it too, which took some sanding as well. yipee.  But let me tell ya, a completely bare and clean piece of furniture is such a beautiful sight. 

Once it was completely stripped down I put a coat of gray spray primer on it. 

And then I did two coats of red spray paint to finish it off. Isn't she beautiful?

This bed has been in the boys room up until we got them bunk beds a couple months ago. It's in our attic right now, but I plan on putting it in our guest room eventually. But for some reason I love this bed so much I will never get rid of it, even when we don't have a use for it anymore.