Furniture refinishing

As I know, old furniture can be refinished and if your furniture are with a little elbow grease you can make it handsome again. You just need to understand the basics of refinishing techniques.

When refinishing furniture, you must do the most unpleasant part of the job first. Removing the old finish can be a cumbersome and messy task. For a while early in the process, until you start getting down to the wood underneath the mess, you may feel that you have completely ruined the piece. Have patience. Once you get to the point of final sanding the wood, you will have graduated from making a mess to creating a masterpiece. When you are finished, you will be proud of what you were able to create.

You can remove old paint and varnish in a couple of different ways, primarily by sanding and by the use of chemical strippers. Heat guns can also be used for stripping and are sometimes used as a supplement to the other methods in the removal of a particularly stubborn finish.

Sanding is a good method only if you have good sanding equipment and are experienced in the use of such equipment. If you are trying to remove an old finish by hand sanding or with a common orbital finishing sander, you will work yourself into a puddle and waste a lot of sandpaper. On the other hand, belt and disk sanders can remove finishes quickly, but since they are capable of removing so much material, you must be very careful not to disfigure the piece by sanding too deeply. It is also difficult to sand varnish from round or decoratively curved areas such as turned table legs.

Chemical strippers, commonly called "paint strippers," are an effective means of removing paint and varnish from wood furniture or projects. Using these chemicals is probably the fastest and easiest method for most people. Despite what you may read on the back of a can, if you want to do a really good job, some sanding will still be required after the old finish is removed by the stripper.