Sat 30th Jan, 2010
You Can Refinish Your Own Wood Furniture
More and more people are buying older pieces of wooden furniture and refinishing them back to their previous condition. Restoring old furniture is a great way to get “new” furniture at a fraction of the cost. Wooden furniture often holds a special place in our homes because it is so beautiful and can easily be passed down from one generation to the next. Well built wood furniture is hard to come by these days and often costs a small fortune when bought new.
The procedure of changing an old piece of wood furniture that has been neglected and returning it to a noteworthy piece of art can be time consuming but the end results are worth it. If you have patience and a little bit of curiosity then it isn’t hard to restore most wood furniture pieces. Restoring plain pieces of furniture is always easier when you’re first starting out, so you might want to begin with a piece like a small desk or even an old wooden toy. Here are the simple steps you’ll take to restore almost all wooden dressers:
You’ll first want to remove any old paint or finish carefully without damaging the wood beneath it. You can reveal the bare wood surface of a piece of furniture with chemicals, specially designed brushes and lots of arm muscles. Dealing with the original finish of a piece of wooden furniture is the first daunting step you’ll have to undertake. Cleaning off an old stain finish can take a long time, so be patient and try not to get discouraged by how much work is involved.
After cleaning off all the old finish you’ll want to sand every side of the furniture piece you’re working on. Sanding a piece of wood furniture removes any remaining finish and it preps the uncovered wood to accept a new finish of some sort. There are many different tips you can follow when you have to sand old wood pieces of furniture with different grit sandpaper.
If your wood furniture piece has any metal hinges or knobs that aren’t working you’ll want to fix them now. You can fix split wood pieces with an adhesive and use wood paste to hide any obvious dents. At this point you will want to fix anything that’s not working on your wooden piece of furniture.
Finally, you can move on to applying a new finish to your old wooden furniture piece. When it’s time to choose a finish you’ll have a lot of options open to you. There are several different types of wood stains you can use to change the color of your furniture and then you should consider what type of polyurethane you’re going to use to preserve that stain.
Refinishing an old piece of furniture can be an incredibly rewarding task to complete. Turning a forgotten piece of furniture into a surprising treasure can be a great summer home improvement project. When it’s all done it’s comforting to know that you can transform a piece of trash into treasure!
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