When I started buying bits of furniture to do up I found that information on the internet was very vague and a lot of DIY forums were mostly inhabited by men who liked the sound of their own keyboard. I'm one of those people who prefers to have exact instructions for tasks but despite this I decided to try things out for myself and have found some methods I go back to time and again. I'm certainly not an expert by any stretch but I thought it might be useful for me to post what has worked for me in case it helps anyone else out there.
A lot of items that find their way home with me from car boots and charity shops are made from pine that has been varnished and has since discoloured by taking on an orangey tone and started to gather a build up of ingrained dirt around the edges. It's easy to be put off taking it home because it looks like it would be too much work to sort out.
You can go either of two ways, stripping and refinishing or painting a different colour altogether. Either way it is worth stripping the varnish back to get a good look at what you are dealing with and see if there is anything worth salvaging under there. If you are wanting to repaint you don't have to be as thorough as you would be if you are taking it right back to the bare wood, just enough to give a solid base for the primer to stick to.The first method people (including me!) try is sandpaper,or glasspaper as I was told is the correct term. The downsides to sanding are that the paper gets quickly blocked with varnish meaning you get through a lot. Another is of course you are flattening and smoothing out the wood grain as you go which can take the characteristic markings out of older pieces or you could lose details such as decorative edges if you are too overenthusiastic. Varnish sinks down quite far into the wood grain and it can be hard to get an even result, let alone sand down far enough to get it all off. Finally, sanding is hard work both physically and on your hands!
So if we aren't using sandpaper what can we use? I like to use liquid varnish and paint stripper, the most commonly known is Nitromors. This option can also be expensive but I try to squeeze as much value out of each drop as I can. The cheapest and best remover I have found was actually from Lidl in their homeware aisle along with the washing powders and the like. It is called Baufix and was around £3.99 for a large bottle. I have also had a lot of success with Colron Furniture Stripper though it is a little bit more expensive. It seems to work well on older (pre-1960's) finishes.
Medium Grade steel wool
Liquid paint and varnish stripper
A plastic filler knife or scraper, not metal.
A metal bowl or old baked bean tin, anything that is strong enough to stand holding the old product without melting.
White spirit and old, clean rags
Gloves and possibly a mask and goggles too, though I don't bother if I am outside (naughty me!)
Kitchen towel for wiping hands and spills
Before you start it is best to make sure all children and nosy pets are well out of the way and you are preferably outside in the fresh air. Baufix claims to have a 'pleasant fruit aroma.' It doesn't!
The easiest way to do this is to have the surface you are working on flat in front of you as it lets the stripper soak into the wood and do it's job more effectively. The varnish will have sunk into the grain of the wood and it will help to lift it back out again.
Hope that was helpful to someone. I still have a couple of sides of my box to finish. I'm not sure still whether to paint it or apply Danish oil. I've also got a very old antique blanket box. It has never had any finish on it and it is quite dirty and I'm not sure of the best way to deal with it. As it's old I'm worried about making a mess and ruining it. If anyone has any ideas I'd love to hear them.
Ms C
Just a quick edit to say I have visited most of the Lidl branches in my area and can't get any more Baufix in any of them! Quite a shame as it's rather good. As I have a lot of projects in the pipeline I'm ordering in a 5 litre drum in instead.
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