by Rob Purifoy

Created on: April 06, 2009

Old furniture can provide a creative license which allows you to personalize it any way you want to. I suggest that you first make sure that "old" doesn't mean "antique", as in valuable piece that you might want to leave alone. In the antique world, refinishing an antique can be as value robbing as putting scotch tape on a rare baseball card. Aside from that caveat, my procedural preference is as follows.

As an example, on one of my early tries of refinishing, I used an old four legged desk, with a scratched top, lap drawer and three left side drawers. This was a smaller desk that my dad used as a kid, about 3 feet by 2 feet, so not really too big. I took the desk outside, cleaned it off, removed the drawers and hardware, and applied some common stripper to all the surfaces. You'll want to do this is the shade so the stripper does not dry abnormally fast, and on a preferably calm nice day. You can also do this in a garage or workshop with proper ventilation. After the usual 30 minutes to let the stripper work, take a plastic putty knife, scrape off the material and discard into a disposable bucket. You can use a metal putty knife very gently for the hard spots, but you could gouge the wood so I'd use a plastic one. Many times you'll have to repeat this process to completely remove the remaining paint or stain.

After you have removed most or all of the old finish, use a bucket of warm water and an abrasive sponge to remove the stripper and additional finish that may be left on countoured surfaces. Then use a dry towel to dry off the whole project. Next is the light sanding process in which you'll want to check for imperfections and scratches. If there are deeper cuts in the wood, use a medium grit sandpaper and sanding block for flat surfaces, or by hand for contours. Use a light sand on the whole project regardless of imperfections to smooth things out and open the wood grain to accept paint or stain. Once again, wipe down the whole piece using a damp towel to clean off the sand dust.

You should now be left with a nice bare piece in which to unleash your creativity on. At this point you can paint it, stain it or a combination of both. In my case on the desk, I painted the legs, sides and drawers to match the teal green highlights of the kitchen, and put a dark cherry wood stain on the desk top itself. On the desktop where I stained it, I used "Spar Urethane" to protect the surface. This urethane is best used over surfaces that will see wear, tear or weather and will add a shine to the surface as well.

You can do the same with painted antique pieces that someone else unwittingly devalued back in the early days. If someone has already refinished or painted an antique, you can bring back the true old style of the piece by removing the old finish and staining it to match the rest of your furniture.

There are short cuts for furniture that is just peeling on the surface but not badly damaged. If the piece already has the color you want (stain or paint), you may be able to do a light sand to take off the top coat and then simply recoat. This can work well with items that get weathered such as garden benches when just the top gloss coat is compromised. It's always fun to experiment with refinishing items and you'll soon learn the best techniques based on your project.

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