So you want to try your hand at refinishing furniture.
The calendar promises mild weekends ahead for working in the garage. You’re armed with miracle strippers and power sanders, and you’ve watched perky TV hosts transform an old table or chair in 30 minutes without mussing their hair.
You’re ready. But before you begin, you should ask yourself several questions. The most important one is:
Do I really want to do this?
Refinishing is tedious. It requires tons of time, elbow grease and exposure to toxic fumes.
A common situation for amateurs, says professional refinisher Jeff Porter, is “getting halfway done stripping and finding out it’s not a fun thing to do.” Porter and his brother, Cregg, run the refinishing side of their family’s business, Cheep Antiques in Kansas City, Mo.
“They bring [their half-stripped piece] down here and say, ‘My house stinks, my wife is screaming at me, and I’ve scratched it up by scrubbing the wrong way,’ ” Porter says.
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The two most egregious errors committed against wood by lay refinishers, experts report, are power sanding and “dip” stripping.
When you use a power sander to strip down to bare wood, “you dip into the wood and create dips and gouge marks,” says Tim Anderson, owner of Twilight Zone Designs in Spring Hill, Kan.
Your goal in stripping should be to retain the original patina as much as possible and gently remove the top coat.
Professional restoration can cost anywhere from $125 for a chair to several hundred dollars for a dining room table or an armoire. Prices vary widely, depending on the condition of the piece, its size and intricacy. Some refinishers will give you a ballpark estimate over the phone (be prepared to answer a lot of questions). Nearly all will give a free estimate if you bring in the piece.
If your piece is not a priceless antique and you are sure you want to refinish it yourself, the next step is research. To choose the right products and techniques, you need to find out as much as you can about your piece. What kind of wood is it? Has it been stained? What kind of finish is on it?
After you’ve done your homework, the next step is buying the right tools and products for the job. Go to a paint or hardware store with a knowledgeable staff and explain your project to them if you want more advice.
Once a piece is stripped of old bad finishes and cleaned, the art of the refinisher really comes into play. Recreating the original look of a piece, be it 35, 75 or 300 years old, requires a precise understanding of the stain used in that era. It also requires a painterly ability to blend stains. Professionals talk of applying background color, adding dye to toner coats and other refinements far beyond the grasp of most people.
Peter Kohl, owner of Peter Kohl Restoration in Kansas City, Mo., says there is no substitute for trial-and-error experience to get it to look right.
“I’ve been doing this for 32 years, but I learn new stuff every day,” he says.
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Edited by Cara DiPasquale ([email protected]) and Kris Karnopp ([email protected])