What Romance taught me about refinishing furniture

Refinishing furniture is a lot like being in a relationship. It takes time and patience, but any idiot can do it. I'm Angelica, and today we're refinishing this stinky old buffet table to look like this. The internet is full of contradicting opinions about how to refinish wood, and so I have boiled down the entire internet, you heard me, the whole internet, into four steps so you don't have to. Strip, sand, spirits, seal, easy. Here we go, it's happening. Before I decided to do this project, I sanded a little test patch on the side of the furniture to see what color the wood was underneath to make sure I actually wanted to go through this process. Just make sure to do that in a hidden corner, probably not front and center in case it doesn't go that well. I wanted to show you guys side-by-side progress of this project by refinishing only one side of the table at a time so you can compare to the original wood. So I just taped down the middle to split the table in half, and then at the end of the project, I went in and refinished the other side of the table as well. Make sure you're set up in a well-ventilated area with a drop cloth to protect your floors. Then just start by removing any hardware and wiping down the furniture. Nothing intense, just make it clean-ish. And if you haven't subscribed already, today's the day to do it. Step one, strip. Stripping the wood will get rid of glossy finishes and paint, and it's much faster and easier than trying to just sand through all those layers. So I'll still do a little sanding later, but I'm gonna start by stripping first, and it's gonna save me a ton of time. To strip the wood, I'm using Citrus Strip. Apply generously with a stiff brush wherever you wanna strip and let it sit for 30 minutes or however long indicated on the bottle. Stripping furniture is like breaking down the emotional walls of your partner. Take my boyfriend, Rick, for example. When we first met, he tried his hardest never to cry in front of me. But I said, uh-uh, no, you need to cry in front of me twice a day, every day. Let me see your inner truth and beauty. Stripping agents are for sure toxic, so please wear gloves, eye protection, and a respirator mask. See this? This is wrong. This is not an adequate mask. Don't do this. Because I did not wear a respirator mask, I will not be living to reach my 80s. But that is a choice, because I don't want to outlive my boyfriend. I wanna die first, and now I will. If you feel differently, you should wear a respirator. When the time is up, use a paint scraper to scrape off the goo. Don't let it sit too long before scraping, because then the paint or finish can re-harden. Use a piece of steel wool to get into those round edges and difficult corners, and it'll just scrub off more. So you can see the orange citrus strip is scraping off kind of brown, because some of the wood stain is already coming off with it. Stripping is also easiest on a flat surface. So if you have a piece with lots of intricate details, you really can't strip those parts. You'll probably want to refinish using a Dremel tool, which can sand into all those crevices. The wood may still look dark, but that's because it's wet. Let it dry out, and it'll look a lot lighter. And you need to let it dry out anyway in order to prepare for sanding. Wipe down your furniture with a rag. Get all goo off and let it dry out. Otherwise, it'll gunk up your sander. Step two, sanding. A corner sander would have made it easier to get into the corners, obviously. But I just had an orbital sander on me, and that worked pretty well. DIY projects are a lot like romantic relationships. It's all about choosing which sacrifices you're okay with. Every time fall comes around, I get extremely nostalgic and want to watch Sex and the City. Do I want to watch it alone? No, obviously I don't. Does Rick want to spend his evenings watching Sex and the City? Probably not, but it's a sacrifice he's willing to make. And he has a lot of opinions about Miranda's outfits. For the corners, I just took a sanding sheet and went in by hand. You want to start with a lower grit sandpaper and work your way up to get a smooth finish. I started with 40 grit. You can go all the way up to 220. Once I was done sanding, I took tack cloths to clean up all the sawdust. You just want to get rid of all the dust and debris before applying any kind of top coat or paint. Step three, apply mineral spirits. If you strip the wood like I did, then you need to apply mineral spirits. The mineral spirits will neutralize any remnants of the citrus strip. Otherwise, citrus strip will eat through any top coat or paint you put on. You can apply mineral spirits using a rag or sponge. And again, you can just buy this at your local hardware store. The wood will look temporarily darker again, but again, that's because it's wet. You just have to let it dry out after. Mineral spirits are like getting a good night's sleep. It wipes the slate clean. People say that in a relationship, you should not go to bed angry. Uh-uh, I disagree. I say always go to bed angry. Or not, I guess I don't say that. I say like, if you're angry, go to bed. Because you calm down overnight, you wake up feeling refreshed, and the thing you were fighting about doesn't seem like it matters anymore, and everybody's happy. So whenever I'm in a fight with Rick, I try to just fall asleep immediately. It sometimes is uncomfortable, but I always feel better. I let the wood dry again so that it looked like this. And then I went ahead and did the entire same stripping and sanding process to the other side of the buffet table, during which I discovered that one of the top drawers was patched together with a piece of different wood at some point. So the wood's gonna look a little different there, but I kind of like that imperfection. Imperfections are what make us love each other. My left foot is a size and a half bigger than my right foot. I think if they were the same size, Rick would stop loving me like today. It's that simple. Step four, seal. To complete this piece, I'm going to seal with a spray lacquer finish. If you wanna stain or paint the wood, you need to do that first. But since I want a natural wood look, I'm going straight to the top coat. For a top coat, there are lots of options. There's a great video I'll link below that walks through a bunch of these finishing options in detail. But the summary is, some of the most popular finishes are a polyurethane, which will offer the most protection, so it's great for high-traffic furniture like a coffee table. But it can have a sort of plasticky, artificial look to it, and it will darken the appearance of the wood. Another option is a lacquer, which I did. It will give pretty good protection, it looks less plasticky, and it dries the fastest of all the finishes, so you can finish your project faster. Another good option is a wax finish. It's the least protective, but it's best for preserving the natural look of the wood. You can even use a white wax to get an extra light and bright wood look. The spray can I used made it difficult to get an even finish and it also got some droplets on places, so if I did this over again, I'd probably use a white wax. But what I love about the lacquer is that it got me the natural, aged look I was going for. And that concludes this project. Shout out to Rick for letting me feature him in this video. If you haven't subscribed yet, click subscribe. Click the bell so you get notified when there's a video. Like the video if you liked it. If you didn't, then, you know, your work is done here. I finished this over about three days, but I took lots of breaks and I didn't work that hard. But if you have one whole day to give to it, you could probably do it in a day. The total cost for this project with all the supplies was $79.33, pretty dang good. In case you're wondering, I found the piece of furniture off Facebook Marketplace for a sleek $100. There are great deals on there. I'm always scrounging. I think it's an antique. I don't really know what qualifies as antique. It's old, it's dirty. Comment below the oldest piece of furniture or accessory that you have in your home. Tell me in the comments, please. That's all. Thanks for watching. Bye.