No More!

No more mouse hair, that is! 

I showed a co-worker friend of mine the hair that came out of the little set of drawers I'm redoing and she was fairly certain it was mouse hair. I'm so glad I didn't think it was mouse hair when I first found it...I would have been even more grossed out. 

Yep...that's mouse hair I cleaned out of there. 

But before I could take on the eradication project, I wanted to finish sanding everything.

I told my Dad I was having a hard time getting the icky finish off and he suggested trying a different grit of sandpaper. It made ALL the difference. The finish came off so much easier and faster after I took his suggestion.Thanks, Dad!

On the left is a paper similar to what I used the first time I sanded...and on the right is the one I changed to. Big difference! 

I got to the bottom of the piece and had to deal with sanding around these little knobs. I thought that was relatively difficult.

But then I had to do the drawers...

 

...and they were WAY more difficult than those little knobs. 

But they ended up looking like this...

...so I guess it was worth the fight I had with them. I'm sure my neighbors were having a good laugh as I fought to keep the drawer upright while sanding it by holding it with my knees so I could use two hands on the sander. 

The corners were especially tricky, so I finally gave up and sanded them all down.

Maybe it'll help give the piece a little softer look? 

After I got everything sanded down, I sprayed all the pieces down with a hose and then scrubbed them out. I was determined that there be no more mouse hair! 

And I made sure to protect my hands this time around...

Then I let everything sit out in the sun for a while to dry out.

Yep, these are all the pieces soaking wet. 

Next up...staining the inside and painting the outside. Stay tuned!

Making Progress...and Other Unique Discoveries

Remember this piece of furniture I found? 

I finally started working on it. 

I put on a pretty mask. (It was windy, so please excuse my hair).

And started to use a sander for the first time. And this is what I ended up with after about 15 minutes.

Nice, right? I'm kidding. Obviously, it's not that good looking. But I had an old piece of sandpaper on the sander and it ultimately doesn't matter if I get it all off since I'm painting it, as long as the surface is pretty smooth.

Then I decided to work on one of the sides. And made the mistake of taking out the drawers.

And I found this inside:

Nasty. 

But I'm pretty sure this stuff was the source of the smell I mentioned in that previous post. 

I tipped the whole thing over and these are some of the things that came out:

Gross. At least they were dead. And I did a decently thorough inspection, so I'm pretty sure they didn't have any live friends. 

And then I tipped it over again and kind of knocked on the back of it to get more stuff out, and this is what I found:

Yes, that is a pile of hair and dust, in a line. I have to wonder, with this many short little hairs, did somebody trim their hair over a drawer? Or maybe store a razor full of little hairs in it?

I don't want to know.

At this point, I was extra thankful for the mask my mom had recommended I use and that my dad had found for me. The smell of that hair and all that dust was bad, but it could have been much worse. And I could have been breathing it in.

There was some stuff that just didn't want to come out without some assistance, but there was no way I was touching it with my bare hands. I didn't have any gloves in the house though, so I had to resort to this, the next best thing:

By this point I was pretty much ready to call it quits for the day. There's still a substantial amount of cleaning/vacuuming to be done in this piece before I'll let it anywhere near my front door. But hopefully the worst of it is gone and the smell will start to dissipate...