How to Strip and Refinish Furniture Part 2

In my last post we were waiting on stripper to do its job.  Today we’re going to talk about how to strip and refinish furniture part 2 by removing the goo the stripper creates and prepping your surface for stain or paint.

You should be looking at something like this.

Paint is bubbling, things are happening and right about now you are thinking “oh yeah, I got this!”  The photo directly above is what you want to see, fully bubbled paint all over your surface.

This is where things get exciting.

After the stripper does its job you want to use a putty knife to remove all the goo.  This is another messy job!  I scrape mine off into a disposable container but I don’t throw it away just yet.  I learned a few years ago that if I need to I can reuse it on areas that need a little more stripping.  Stripper isn’t cheap and by reusing it you can save of money.

Now if you learn anything from this series of posts ANYTHING at all, I want to stress that you should scrape your paint off in the direction of the grain.  AGAIN, scrape your paint off in the direction of the wood grain!!!!  

Why?  Well I’ll tell you why.  By applying the stripper to the wood you have added moisture to the wood.  When wood gets wet it swells and becomes soft.  When wood swells and becomes soft it’s easily damaged.  Don’t take your putty knife and go to town scraping away!  Scrape the paint off gently in the direction of the grain and TAKE YOUR TIME.  This isn’t an overnight furniture flip.  This is a learned craft that takes LOTS of time.  Work on removing the stripper slowly with your putty knife going with the grain whenever possible. Now is not the time to get greedy and mess up your piece before you even have a chance to see what’s under the paint.

Once you start scraping you may realize you have another layer of paint underneath.  That’s ok.   This is where you can use the stripper you’ve already scraped off or add new.  I usually end up having to do both.  You’re also going to be sanding this so if you have paint left in spots you’ll get to it when you sand.

There will be areas on some more detailed pieces that a putty knife can’t get into.  For these areas I like to use a small wire bristle brush.  Again remember we are going with the grain wherever possible.

Now we’re going to add in some Mineral Spirits or Paint Thinner to get off any goo that wasn’t scrape-able.  I prefer “oderless” mineral spirits as it’s much easier on my nose.

Apply the mineral spirits with a rag and gloved hand and gently rub all of the excess goo off.  This takes some time and shows you where you may need to take your putty knife or wire brush to gently work paint out of grooves and what not.

 OK I think this is a good stopping point for now.  Once all of our paint is removed and we’ve used out mineral spirits to clean everything up we’ll need to wait for the wood to dry and look something like the photo above.

Next up~sanding.  Stay tuned friends.  We can do this!  In the meantime let me know by commenting below if you have any questions and I’ll address them in the next post.

Until next time!

Beth

*NOTE~I only reuse stripper on the same piece and right away.  If used stripper sits out for very long it becomes an unworkable goo and will need to be disposed of.  Check with your local garbage pickup or landfill for disposing of it properly.