The cold has put the kibosh on my newest DIY project – refinishing an old farmhouse-type kitchen hutch we got from the in-laws. I started stripping it about three weeks ago, but haven’t been able to get very far because the Citristrip stripper requires the temperature to be at least 65 degrees. This morning’s temperature in our garage wasn’t even 50!

This project is quite a bit more time-consuming that the last one, which was just refinishing a few boards on a hall tree. My original idea was to strip off the paint (and hopefully get the stickers off the glass doors) and stain it with a dark color to somewhat match the cabinets in my kitchen. But as I started stripping it, I noticed that the quality of the wood beneath it isn’t the same everywhere. The back panel seems to be more of a thin plywood and I’m guessing the moveable shelves might be the same. The wood on top of the hutch seems to be much lighter and softer than the wood on top of the buffet-like bottom piece.

I’ll have to see what it looks like when I get it all stripped to determine whether I’ll stain or paint it, I guess. If I decide to go with paint, I may keep the glass knobs, although I’m not sure they’re exactly my style. But if I decide to stain the hutch, I’ll probably replace the glass with a satin nickel knob.

For this refinishing project, I’m using both the brush-on Citristrip gel and the aerosol spray gel. The spray gel is much easier to apply evenly in the nooks and crannies and undersides of the hutch. But given all those harder to reach places, the stripping process definitely is time-consuming.

So far, I’ve only been able to remove the old layers of paint from the top, a portion of the back and the base area where the hutch meets the buffet. I’m encouraged by how the top of the buffet looks; if most of the wood turns out that way, it should look pretty nice.

Now, if the weather would just cooperate so I could actually work on it!

Watch my video at http://youtu.be/bv1zrKTml6s or below: