Transcripts
1. Intro: Hello everybody. My name is Emily and
I'm a furniture artist. You can check out
my transformations and my process videos on my Instagram or TikTok at
restore, refurbish revive. Today I'm gonna talk
to you guys about one of the fundamental things you need to know if you plan on transforming an old
piece of furniture, either flipping it for
profit or for yourself. That is stripping furniture. In this video, I'm
going to share with you guys what stripping
furniture is. When you should strip furniture, what materials you're
going to need. And I'm going to take
you through a demo where I show you how I strip the old paint finish off of
a threat to address her.
2. When and Why: What is stripping furniture? Stripping furniture is
the process of using chemicals to remove
an old finish from a piece of furniture. That could be lacquer, varnish, enamel, paint stain. The reason that you
would want to strip furniture is if you plan on changing the same color or painting the
piece of furniture, or if you're going
for that row would look that's really
popular right now.
3. Materials: Okay, So the
materials that you're going to need to strip
a piece of furniture. First you're gonna need some
sort of chemical Strindberg. I use citrus strip just
because it has no harsh fumes, but there are tons out there on the market and in your
local hardware store, find one that works for you. Just be sure to read the
back of it so you know the details of how to discarded once you're done
with it and how long you should leave it on
your piece of furniture. You're also going to
need plastic wrap. I just got this at
the grocery store. This is to keep your stripper from drying
out while it's working. You're going to need
chemical resistant gloves. In the video, you'll
see that I use just regular latex gloves
and that does not work well. My store was out of
chemical resistant gloves at the time and latex gloves, the stripper will
just eat through it and you'll have
to keep changing and reapplying them to make sure you get chemical resistant. You're going to need a putty
knife or a paint scraper. I like to use plastic
because it's less harsh on the wood and sometimes
when the wood is soft from the moisture
of the stripper, metal can damage it. So something less abrasive, like plastic works great. You're going to need steel wool. I use medium grade, fine-grained also works well, just something
gentle enough again, where you're not going
to damage the wood, but it's still going to work
to remove any leftover strip or odorless mineral spirits. This will loosen up the stripper after you are done
scraping off as much of it as you can help with cleanup. Finally, above, I just put
a bag in this and I use it when I'm discarding the stripper that I'm scraping off of
the piece of furniture, it makes for an easier cleanup.
4. Demo: I'm opening up my garage
again for good ventilation and just good airflow so that I don't breathe
in any chemicals. Here's the dresser
that I'm working on. I thrift did this off Facebook Marketplace and I
actually got it for free. But as you can see, it is going to be a lot of work. So we have chipping paint
all over the top of it. Strange oil stains and baby
powder spilt in the drawers. So there's a lot going
on with this piece. But the main thing
we're focusing on for this video obviously is stripping this paint
off the top of it. I am gonna be repainting
this piece of furniture and obviously with the texture of the previous paint and the
condition that it was in, I can't just scuff sand and
Prime and paint over this. I actually have to strip it off so that I get
a smooth finish. The materials. So here's my stripper,
here's plastic wrap, a chip brush that I
forgot to mention in my intro, the gloves. Remember you want chemical
resistant gloves? Here I am putting
on those gloves. We're ready to go. You're going to start by applying a
generous amount of stripper. You really want
this to be applied fairly thick because
if it's too thin, it will dry out and
it won't do its job. So you want a nice thick
layer that remains wet, which is again, why we
have that plastic wrap. I'm just going to spread
it out with my chip brush. I'm using a chip brush
because it's inexpensive. I don't want to use a good
brush for something like this. You really want to
make sure that you go all the way to the edges. Lot of times people forget to get right up against the edge. There is still paint
and old finish there. So you want to make sure that
you get that really well. Here I am applying to the rounded part
of the edges as well. This is going to be a little
bit harder to remove, but I'll show you a trick
using a little wire brush. Now I'm going in
with my plastic wrap and I am just covering
the entire surface, making sure to wrap it around the edges so that
air doesn't get in. And this is just going to
lock in that moisture so that the product doesn't dry
out while it's working. Once it's wrapped, you're
gonna wait anywhere from 30 minutes to eight hours. I ended up waiting around five hours for this
one before coming back to it. Here's my bucket
and I'm just adding a bag to it so that
I can easily get rid of the old stripper and finish when I'm done removing
it from the surface. There's my putty scraper
or paint scraper. It's a plastic one like I mentioned before because
the metal one might be too abrasive for the surface now that it's been softened
from the moisture, you're just going to peel
back that plastic wrap and go in and scrape off the finish and then discard it
into your bucket. Here I am trying to get as
much of the stripper off as possible before I go in with my steel wool and
my mineral spirits. Now I'm grabbing my
odorless mineral spirits and my medium grade steel wool. And I'm just going
to use this to loosen up any extra bits of stripper residue that remain on the surface of this project. And I want to get
all of that off. The reason that it's really important to get all
of that off is one, because you don't
want it to continue to go into your wood, but you also don't want to clog your sander as you see
on this down after Here's that little
trip I told you about them using
a wire brush and some odorless mineral
spirits to get into all of those little
cracks and crevices. This works great for
curves and edges and legs. It's a really useful tool. Finally, I'd just like
to go in with some water and a rag and just wipe
down that surface again, make sure that I got
everything off of it. Then I hang my rags
outside to dry. Here's the finished product. You might have a little bit of leftover areas of
paint or stain. That's fine. You can go in with your sander once you're done
stripping and it dries, you can get rid of that
just by power ending.
Emily B, Restore Refurbish Revive
