So I dug this thing out of my parents outside room (shed). I think it's supposed to be a drying rack. It looked terrible but I saw potential and carted it off home. Thanks mom.
After giving it a good scrubbing all that gross black stuff on the iron bits came off. Turns out it wasn't rust as I had originally thought, just grime. It came out nice and white and was actually in very good condition. The wooden sides needed some TLC but I was super excited that with minimal effort this drying rack would be as good as new.
So I very lightly sanded the wood, and applied some wood filler where needed. Not that much was needed. Yay! This is turning out great. No hidden terrible surprises.
Once that was dry I started staining it with an African mahogany colored gel stain. I didn't apply it with a cloth as the bottle recommended but used an ordinary smallish paint brush. At first I thought I should tape it off first but noticed that the stain just wipes off the iron bits so ended up not bothering with the tape. I did paint relatively carefully though. Originally I had wanted to get all creative on the wooden bit was so excited to get started that I was half way through staining before I remembered. Oops! It turns out that the plain stain was appealing to me though and so I thought what is wrong with a little boringly traditional every now and again.
Only one coat was needed and when that was dry I applied (again carefully and with an appropriately sized brush) some varnish.
And that is that. The only "hiccup" was that I was hoping to use it to store some of my magazines but noticed that they didn't exactly fit and looked rather silly housed there. After trying to house some of our DVD's and CD's that also didn't look quite right, I am still looking for a purpose for my new and insanely easily revamped drying rack. I will probably end up using it as a drying rack. I am definitely a washing girl and hate the drying bit. We don't have a dishwasher so our dishes normally just end up air drying. Maybe this will look better than those ugly plastic ones that we currently have.
UPDATE: It has actually been a few weeks since I typed this post. I have been using the drying rack as a drying rack and it works very well, better than the plastic one. Also I still love looking at it while washing the dishes. The only thing is that it is relatively small and so I have not chucked the plastic one yet.
