Sunshine and varnish stripper!

I thought it was high time for a new blog post, so here's a little one about a renovation project I completed last week.

The Church pew after it was dropped off at the workshop.

This lovely old pine pew arrived a couple of weeks ago, it was covered in nasty damaged varnish. The client bought it recently and wanted it tidied up so she could put it in her porch (which it fitted perfectly!).

I really liked the design, especially the 'arches' on the legs that looked very like the kind of window you'd see in an old church. It appears that it had been dismantled and cut down.

So first thing to do was to strip off the varnish, for this I used Nitromors paint and varnish stripper. Not very nice stuff, and a lot less effective than it used to be, health and safety has a lot to answer for!

However it tackled the old varnish with ease, which made my life much easier!

Here is the pew after stripping the varnish off.

With all the varnish stripped off the next task was to wash the timber to remove any residue from the Nitromors. This also raised the grain of the timber, so once it was dry it was time to give the entire pew a light sand.

After sanding all that was left to do was to apply a new finish. I chose linseed oil as it's a finish that was traditionally used for church furniture, and offers good protection to the wood.

I gave the pew four coats of oil which really brought out the grain of the pine and gave it a welcoming warm colour.

As you can see below..

The pew after applying linseed oil.

I was pleasantly surprised how well it came out! The pew was then put into my store for a few days to dry and to await collection.

It was picked up the other day by a very happy client, who is now hopefully making good use of it in this fantastic warm weather.