The Lazy Man’s (or Woman’s) Guide to Easy Furniture Refinishing

By Bill Primavera

Some years ago, I wrote a Home Guru column called The Lazy Man’s Guide to Gardening which proved very popular. It presented an assortment of techniques to bypass back-breaking labor in the garden (mostly focusing on proper mulching).

I still receive comments from amateur gardeners about how helpful that article was to them, one woman even going so far as to say the piece improved her experience of living in the country.

Since then, writing as The Home Guru, I’ve always sought to explore ways of making home life and chores easier. Why go for the harder way to do things, after all?

Such is the case with refinishing the surfaces of furniture. Not so long ago, I wrote a column about classic refinishing techniques for furniture that was purist in its approach, step by step, to achieving a fine finish, called a “French polish finish.” But more recently, I reconsidered my approach in that article and acknowledged to myself that I was violating my own quest to make things easier, rather than harder, for the homeowner in everything that he or she does.

So, here’s the easier – much easier – approach to furniture refinishing.

When my wife Margaret and I owned an antiques shop, first in Brooklyn Heights (big success over a five-year period), then in Yorktown Heights (big dud, which closed after a year), we sold a lot of old furniture, some genuinely antique (over 100 years old) and some reproductions from the early 1920s to the ‘40s. Many times, it would come from auction houses or private homes with damaged finishes, but that was okay because we had an instant fixer-upper in our trusty bottle of Old English Furniture Polish, which filled in the scratches quite nicely.

But sometimes there is a need or desire to do a better job of refinishing wood surfaces, but still, it need not be a laborious or costly project.

While purists might insist on stripping down a finish to bare, raw wood, I always preferred to work with what I had, without starting from scratch, and the major tool for doing that is steel wool. Specifically, 000 steel wool, which is its finest version. If the surface is really bad, one might start with 00 steel wool, which is more efficient in roughing up the old surface, then finish with the finer 000 version.

After that, I would determine whether the deeper color was needed and, if so, I would take a soft rag folded into a pad, dip it into wood stain and rub it into the surface. After that dried thoroughly, I would decide whether I wanted to create a patina with either shellac, varnish or polyurethane. 

In my early days, when I was willing to put a little more time into the process, I would use shellac which, even though it dries faster than varnish, was still not as fast as polyurethane. I would apply a primary coat of the shellac, wait until it dried, then rub it down with steel wool to remove the specs and bubbles. I would repeat this process two to three times until I built up a lustrous patina. Following that, I would finish it off with either Butcher’s Wax or – a neat short step – wax shoe polish.

But as I got older, and more desirous of instant gratification, I abandoned even the shellac and turned to polyurethane, which provides a harder, waterproof surface and dries faster. Also, I could get it in either shiny or semi-gloss finishes. I would choose the semi-gloss, and, after it dried, I would buff it with the 000 steel wool, just as I would do with shellac, then complete the task with wax shoe polish that I would buff up.

As I look around my house at pieces of furniture from various periods of my life, I am proud to say that their finishes are still all in great shape from having used this technique.

Bill Primavera, while a publicist and journalist, is also a realtor associated with William Raveis Real Estate and founder of Primavera Public Relations, Inc. (www.PrimaveraPR.com). To engage the services of The Home Guru to market your home for sale, call 914-522-2076.

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