Refinish birch bedroom set

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A couple asked about refinishing and darkening their 15 year old birch bedroom set which had a whitewash finish. My reply outlined the necessary steps for stripping the old finish from the bedroom set, preparing the surface, staining the furniture and suggesting a tung oil finish.

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Refinish a birch bedroom set

My wife and I would like to refinish a birch bedroom set. It has a whitewash type finish (light pink/peach colour - not painted) and is about 15 years old. It has discoloured some over the years, and we would like to refinish in a much darker colour - like mahogany or cherry.

What kind of work are we looking at? Would we strip it, sand it, stain it, and seal it? Is there a way to get out of sanding? Any advice would be much appreciated. Thanks. I have attached a picture of one of the pieces in question.

Reply:

From what I can tell from the picture you shouldn't have to do any sanding.

General refinishing procedure

The procedure would be stripping the old finish off, prepare the surface, stain and finish.

The old whitewash

Quite often the product used to make the whitewash appearance will fill the grain pattern and pores of the wood, but will generally accept stain nicely. A lot of the whitewash material will come off with the stripping and surface preparation steps, but that's ok.

Your furniture should be fairly easy to strip, because the lines are clean with no nooks or crannies.

Stripping the old whitewash finish

Take a look at the general stripping pages and basic stripping for furniture finish stripping information. See our surface preparation page for information about preparation of the furniture surface after the old finish is stripped off.

Staining the bedroom furniture darker

Then go to Staining for information about staining and then to the finishing page.

Additional information

Follow all the links given on the pages for more information. The site has 240+ pages of information. Another good page to look at is email replies That page is the content page to our replies to email questions and you can find a lot of information to some more specialized questions that might give you more information about things you may run into.

Tung oil finish on the refinished whitewash bedroom set

I recommend tung oil finish for beginning refinishers, because it's one of the better finishes and is probably the easiest finish to apply successfully. Take a look at our page tung oil finish for lots of information about tung oil. If you use a tung oil finish be sure to use an oil base stain.

Second email question

Thanks Tom.

Refinish indoors or outdoors

Could I use that orange stuff from your website to strip this set? And is that stuff safe to use indoors, or should I still refinish the set out in the garage? Thanks a lot for your help. Much appreciated.

Eric

Second reply

Hi Eric

Citristrip to strip birch whitewash bedroom set

The Citristrip stripper is safer to use than the old methylene chloride stripper, but you still need to use precautions, such as good ventilation, eye and skin protection. Cross ventilation should be adequate, such as a window on each side of where you're working with a fan pulling fresh air in, blowing across where you're working and out the window on the other side. If you work in the garage I would suggest having the door open.

Some people aren't bothered using Citristrip, but I've received email from a couple of people who have been severely blistered by skin contact.