Pine furniture - how to rescue it please?

VickyA_2

Hello! We're just moving into our new house and all our pine furniture is looking a little tired. It's not that old, but due to a number of house moves (this is our very first "own home") it looks a little sad. Can anyone suggest what we can do with it? What treatment to put on? When to apply it?

Thank you very much.

keith969

Is it bare wood or varnished? If its just bare wood, probably the best thing to do is to run it down with steel wool if its not marked too deeply.

If its varnished, you can use varnish remover (Colron for example) and steel wool to remove the old varnish, then re-varnish it.

VickyA_2

keith969 wrote: »

Is it bare wood or varnished? If its just bare wood, probably the best thing to do is to run it down with steel wool if its not marked too deeply.

Thanks. It's bare wood.

diable

Use Bees wax

Foggster

Use a fine wire wool to get rid of light staining and marks and then beeswax it.

never_enough

As above but beeswax is not the only option, you can also stain or paint. I've recently painted some very 80's looking (that very yellow pine) bedside cupboards with Farrow & Ball 'Bone' for my mother. I added glass knobs & they looked amazing.

diable

I mentioned bees wax as I love the natural look of pine my bed frame is looking gorgeous as it gets older, you can also sand the pine down and water down some white emulsion to give it the "distressed" look or even sand it down afterwards.

If you do try anything out do it on a section that is not noticeable if you mess it up.

diable

!!!!!! dbl post.......

tifrap_2

A good approach, as has been said above, is to use wire wool first, not too coarse, then use some wax.

There are a couple of tricks that you can use that antique restorers use too.
First dont use beeswax - use Briwax (clear) - it is formulated to be suitable as a first coat and a top coat. it contains a mixture of beeswax, parafin wax and carnuba wax, each does a specific job.

Once you have got any obvious grime off of the old furniture with wire wool,
grab a big hunk of wire wool and use it to apply the first coat of briwax with, this will mix with the wood dust that it generates and act as a grain sealer. the hunk of wire wool will become like a pad after a while, this pad gets better as you use it. give it a thorough going over with this abrasive waxer, it'll merge in any old wax and even out any colour oddities.

then leave that wax to harden.

Next wipe it very lightly with one of those green scouring pads, just enough to take off any thick deposits of the wire applied wax (the good stuff will be finely filling the surface grain).
once the whole peice of furniture is done get a big soft peice of cotton, not fluffy, old bed sheets or shirts are good. scoop out a chunk of briwax and apply it liberally to the surface, working it in, but not attempting to polish yet. you should aim to leave a thin even covering of the wax. you will get a feel for how quickly the wax dries as you use it, if it starts to develop a shine, it is too dry - scoop some more from the tub to wetten it.

Leave the wax to dry, an hour or so - overnight if you have the patience.

Now buff it up, with a soft cloth (fluffy is ok now) or a mop-head on a drill, if you like a shine. thats it.
some people do a couple of waxings, taking the previous one down with fine wire wool, you could do more, but I think just one, a fairly thin finish looks best, not too shiny.

If you have taken any of the pine down to below its previous finish, say by sanding it, you might like to precede the above with an application of thinned briwax - to do this scoop some wax into a tin, and add a tiny drop of white spirit, just enough to make it go runny - put this on with a brush and watch the wood soak it up - then go to step one (the wire wool/wax application).

By the way, if you have got any serious dents or gauges in your wood that you want to repair, try this: once you have cleaned the surface make a pad about the size of the blemish from clean folded cotton. soak the cotton in water and slap it onto the area to be raised. put a hot iron on top of the wet cotton and let it steam (careful not to scorch the wood though) - the steam will sort of re-inflate the crushed wood of the dent. once done let the area dry off, wire wool clean and treat like the rest of the wood.

Hope that is useful.

VickyA_2

Thank you very much to all those people who have taken the time to reply so fully. It looks like I've got a big job to do this weekend with all the pine furniture that we have! :beer:

ERICS_MUM

VickyA wrote: »

Thank you very much to all those people who have taken the time to reply so fully. It looks like I've got a big job to do this weekend with all the pine furniture that we have! :beer:

Sounds like you could really transform your furniture (hope you've got plenty of patience !). Let us know how you get on.


Linda :T