Preparation is not very sexy. It’s hard work with very little to show for it. But unless you want to see your  varnish, paint or stain, lift, bubble or look all mottled, then you will put a lot of elbow grease into your preparation.

What Preparation Do I Need To Do?

First of all, take a good look at the piece of furniture you want to varnish or stain. You must get rid of all the old finish. To do this you need to decide on the stripper and stripping of your choice.

What sort of surface do you have? Is it painted or varnished? Perhaps this is where some professional advice would be most helpful. Strippers come in all sizes and containers and some work well with paint and others with varnish/stains. Have the right sort of stripper.

To determine the correct stripper and method best suited for your project, refer to your hardware guy. Another choice that may be available to you – depending on where you are located, is to have your piece of furniture dipped into a chemical bath to have the previous finish completely removed. This is a process that should only be handled by a professional facility.

Don’t attempt this yourself… remember SAFETY FIRST. These strong chemicals require breathing apparatus and safety gear that the average do-it-yourselfer just doesn’t own. Trying to do it yourself could and most likely would, end up with a severe chemical reaction and perhaps death… YOURS.

Varnishing Brushes

Get a dedicated brush for your varnish work. Any old brush will not work, especially if it loses hair/bristles or has remnants of old paint. Going cheap on a brush to do your varnishing means that your finished work will have hairs and pieces of dried paint marring the surface. Get yourself a good quality brush for varnishing.

Once the surface is completely stripped and allow to dry, sand it over with a fine grade of sandpaper and refer back to the section in this blog on unfinished furniture. Then continue on from there.

Hope this helps.. I do have a couple of other suggestions for reference material I’ve found helpful..

Staining and Finishing Unfinished Furniture and Other

cheers

Paul

Remember to always sand in the direction of the grain wherever possible. The idea is to create ‘tooth’ on the surface. ‘Tooth’ is slightly lifting the surface so it will hold the primer paint. If you don’t create tooth, then the paint that goes on top of it won’t adhere properly. Make sure you use the right primer. Check with your local paint store for the correct primer.

Once the primer is completely dry, begin applying base color (for decorative techniques) or finished coat (for one color application). If the furniture you are refurbishing has been waxed then it is necessary that it be completely stripped first so that no wax or wax residue remains as wax will repel paint and the job will not look at all professional.

Then again, instead of paint you may want to stain and/or varnish the furniture for a completely different look.  Next post  will deal with that.

Painter Paul

How to Paint Just About Anything (Better Homes & Gardens)

stripper applied and all the old paint or varnish removed. What we have left is raw wood or perhaps even base metal if you have a metal chair or table or other piece of furniture. (Just remember that you must use special metal primer over metal).

Take a look at your piece of stripped furniture. See if there are any holes or dents and if so, use wood filler to fill these in. On metal surfaces check with your local hardware store for a specific product for metal as products have different names in different countries.

Next you will need to check for any loose areas where the wood has lifted or come apart from the rest of it. These will need to be glued and a clamp applied until the glue has completely dried. I personally use PVC glue but once again, check with the experts at your local hardware store. These are the guys who will be supplying you with your materials so it pays to be on good terms with them.

Once the glued areas and/or the areas where you have applied wood filler have dried you will need to sand them back and finish with a soft clean cloth to remove any dust. Once the area is cleared of sawdust then your piece of furniture is ready to be primed, stained, varnished of painted.

NOTE: Safety issues:

Perhaps I should have placed this at the top of the list but please take all reasonable precautions. The dust from sanding, the fumes from paint and thinners, wood fillers and any other chemicals must be treated as toxic at all times. Do not use indoors except in a well ventilated room. Wear a dust mask when sanding but be aware that a dust mask will not protect your eyes or your lungs from chemical fumes. Check out the proper protection and wear goggles too. I may seem like I am being over-cautious but let me tell you, no nicely painted or varnished piece of furniture is worth losing the sight in an eye or gaining a respiratory disease.

Painter Paul

How to Paint Just About Anything (Better Homes & Gardens)

• New unfinished furniture
• Old unfinished furniture
• New painted, stained, varnished or waxed furniture
• Previously painted furniture
• Old painted, varnished, stained or waxed furniture

You need to be quite clear about what sort of painting project you are going to do because you will have to handle very different preparations and use very different equipment with each of these projects.

NEW UNFINISHED FURNITURE

The majority of new unfinished furniture is ready for priming, staining and varnishing. This is assuming you want the piece of furniture to be varnished. You may wish to paint it. Whether new or old, furniture which is to receive a painted finish must be smooth, clean and dry. You may even decide you want a decorative finish applied. (Decorative finishes such as antiquing, marbling, and gilding – will be covered in another blog as they are quite complicated and there are many of them).

Check and see if there are any scratches, nicks or grooves in the wood. If there are, then fill them with wood filler and wait for it to dry. Once dry it will need to be sanded level with the surrounding wood. Use a medium grade sandpaper on it. Then lightly sand the whole piece of furniture with No: # 1 grade paper – always sand in the direction of the grain. This creates ‘tooth’. Tooth is a slightly raised surface on the wood which allows the primer to seep into the wood and cling to it.

Next use a clean cloth to wipe down the whole piece of furniture as the dust from the sanding process needs to be completely removed.

PRIMERS

You can either use a special wood primer for enamel paint or you can use some of the enamel paint as a primer. Pour some of the finishing paint into an empty tin and thin with about ten percent of pure spirits of turpentine. Apply to the furniture with a soft, flat bristle brush, using a two-and-one-half inch size for broad, flat surfaces such as chair seats or table tops, and a brush from one to two inches wide for the narrow portions.

Next apply a second and third coat of just as it comes from the can unless it is too thick then it should be slightly thinned. Don’t thin it as much as you did for the initial primer as that should be the thinnest coat of all. Brush each coat out as thinly and evenly as possible. When thickly applied, paint will not dry properly. Allow 24 – 36 hours between each coat and lightly sand the dry paint with a No. 00 sandpaper to remove brush marks, wiping off the dust immediately you have finished the sanding.

FINISHING COAT

Providing the primer coats match the color of the finishing coat completely, one finishing coat of enamel may be use but two is much better. Forty-eight hours should be allowed for drying the first coat of enamel, and the surface may be lightly smoothed with No. 00 sandpaper before the finishing coat is applied.

Enamel is applied straight from the can, without thinning, and should be flowed on with a full brush. Streaks and brush marks must be avoided as much as possible. On broad, flat surfaces, brush first with the grain of the wood, then across the grain so that you spread the paint evenly, and finish by brushing finally with the grain, using light strokes to smooth the surface. Remember that enamel sets more quickly than does ordinary paint, and so you must work quickly.

CHOOSING YOUR PAINT COLOR AND TYPE

Once upon a time, white or ivory painted furniture or dark stained and varnished furniture was the norm. But today colors are big. Some of the colors you may wish to consider canary yellow, Chinese red, apple-green, many different shades of blue, blue-green, apple-green, or mulberry. The sky is the limit.

The method I have described above is just one of the ways, but I found a neat book full of ways to paint furniture, from the plain and simple to the more complex.

I learned quite a bit from some really great books…  here’s one of them

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50 Ways to Paint Furniture: The Easy, Step-by-Step Way to Decorator Looks