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Furniture cleaning should be the first step you perform before refinishing furniture. After cleaning the surface you may discover that refinishing isn't necessary, just some finish restoration might be all you need. Clean furniture is easiest to achieve with a commercial furniture cleaner designed for the job.
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Clean Furniture Buildup of Wax and Dirt
To clean furniture buildup of wax and/or dirt will let finish and paint stripper get right to the old finish and will allow it to work much faster and more efficiently.
Test chemicals
Be sure to test any chemicals on an inconspicuous spot before starting. If you don't need to strip your furniture finish you don't want to have a bad chemical reaction with a restorable finish.
TSP
Be aware that Tri Sodium Phosphate (TSP) may soften a finish.
Also see Furniture Restoration Procedure.
and Furniture Cleaner
A Good Furniture Cleaner
This Furniture Cleaner is a strong heavy duty cleaner with a mineral spirits base and designed for serious furniture cleaning applications.
Apply with a 0000 grade steel wool to remove old oils, wax and grease from any wood surface. Mild soap and water
A mild soap and water bath or just plain water alone is good for keeping a furniture surface clean daily, but a good furniture cleaner is necessary for serious wax and polish buildup removal periodically to get to a good clean furniture surface Spray polishes
Many spray polishes claim to remove the previous polish as you add new, but that doesn't work too well.
Most spray polishes use silicone for the shine and silicone can be very difficult to remove. Water and soap won't remove silicone, only a good furniture cleaner will. It's important to remove all remnants of silicone from a surface to be refinished, because a finish won't stick where there is silicone, it'll just make a pock mark.
Handy materials for basic cleaning
Some handy furniture cleaning materials.
- water
 Orange Oil excellent cleaner and is used in many cleaners and quite a few other applications. It has a pleasant orange smell too.  Murphy Concentrated Liquid Oil Soap is made from pure vegetable oil. Good wood cleaner.
mild detergent - If you can find a mild detergent, most are ultra now days. TSP - Tri Sodium Phosphate does a good job of cleaning, but is very harsh and can damage a furniture finish and your skin. -
 Restor-A-Finish is a real good product that can cover many ills and make a bad finish look good.
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 denatured alcohol is good for cleaning and removing wax, but it will totally dissolve a shellac finish. Test an inconspicous spot before using denatured alcohol on a finish.
 a palm vegetable brush is handy for doing large surfaces like dining table tops, small table tops, chair seats and more. A good supply of different types and sizes of brushes make a job a lot easier and quicker to do. -
 A handle vegetable brush is good for cleaning places like table aprons. They keep your knuckles a safe distance from anything that could whack them.
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 Detail brushes are good for getting into tight places and in those little bitty areas of fancy carvings.
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 A Bottle brush can make short work of cleaning the ornate cutouts of fancy chair backs or anyplace else that most other brushes won't fit.
paper towels -
 rags are real handy to have, especially soft absorbent ones. Paper towels work for most furniture cleaning jobs, but sometimes with ornate carvings or cutouts there will be snags to catch a bit of paper towel. A rag will just catch and make you uncatch it.
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 paint brushes are an absolute must for applying furniture cleaner in trick places like ornate carvings. They're handy for pulling the guck out of carvings too.
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 0000 steel wool is a good helper to get up the stubborn stuff. It's not a good idea to go any more coarse than 0000 as it's an abrasive and will work the same as sandpaper.
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A plastic scraper is better to use than a metal scraper, because it'll flex more and is less likely to gouge. Be sure to get plastic scrapers with rounded sides. They're a lot cheaper too and easier to throw away when they've outlasted their usefulness.
- dowel sharpened in a Pencil sharpener
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toothpicks
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 Jute twine is real handy for cleaning turnings of any type, such as chair legs or the upright portions of the backs of chairs. You can take a piece by the ends and rub it back and forth like a shoe shine cloth and clean turnings in a hurry.
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 A metal container with metal lid is a good safety feature for furniture cleaning, refinishing or any other project where you might have oily rags that could start fire through spontaneous combustion. This container has a self closing lid. .
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Anything that works and doesn't harm restorable furniture finishes is fair game.
Mix soap cleaner with water
Mix soap type furniture cleaner with water as lots of soap type cleaners are too harch to use directly on a furniture finish or painted surface.
Orange Oil
Orange Oil is a good cleaner and with most finishes will add an amount of oil to the wood through the finish. Be sure to keep it out of the reach of children, they may think it's orange juice.
Murphy's Oil Soap
Murphy's Oil Soap is a very good cleaner for wood surfaces, but you have to be sure to rinse the soap thoroughly or sometime later you're liable to have to use a commercial furniture cleaner to remove the oily residue left by the soap.
TSP
TSP is a very harsh cleaner and is very likely to soften, and in some cases, remove a furniture finish.
Clean small areas at a time
Dip the vegetable brush or steel wool in the furniture cleaning soluton and clean small areas at a time so that not too much water is applied at a time.
Wipe the area frequently
Wipe the area to remove residue and water. Keep dipping and rubbing until all evidence of dirt and grime is removed.
Rub in the direction of the grain
Always rub in the direction of the grain, except in the case of heavily painted furniture, then a circular motion may be used.
Denatured alcohol for wax buildup
Denatured alcohol may be used to remove a build up of wax.
Denatured alcohol will soften shellac and will remove a shellac finish.
Denatured alcohol is highly flammable. Dispose of any rags or paper towels used in a covered metal container outside, as it may catch fire by spontaneous combustion.
Use detail brush, sharpened dowel and toothpicks
Use the detail brush to clean carvings and inside edges.
The sharpened dowel and toothpicks are handy for tight inside corners and small areas in carvings.
Heavy twine can be used to clean the tight parts of spindles.
Pay close attention to difficult areas.
Pay close attention to difficult to get to areas. Those are the areas that you will want to have the cleanest so that the furniture stripper can work its best. Grime is a lot easier to clean out of a tight carving or corner than paint is.
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On to stripping
After a thorough furniture cleaning dry the piece well and then go to the Furniture Stripping Basic page and proceed with the stripping step.
Or maybe you're done.
You may be so pleased with the furniture looks after cleaning that you may decide to leave it as it is and rewax for some additional protection and to give you something to do a few years down the line removing the current wax and buildup.
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