This week I had an experience unique and informative to any painter, prop person or home-decorator.
Ghetto-Refinishing. To share in this experience first you need
A) A piece of furniture you have no business refinishing. Best if covered in a slick, somewhat reflective outer seal. Preferably from Ikea.
B) Oil-based wood finish. Must be purely oil-based and not polyurithane with oil polymers. Makes the dry time longer.
C) Damp, cold drying space.
D) Not enough time.
E) A drastic finish requirement, like go from honey to dark walnut in the least amount of steps possible.
F) Spray matte acrlyic.
G) Lemon pledge.
H) Three days.
So assemble your (in this case) side table from Ikea with almost plastic-feeling finish. Make sure it is actual wood though and not some kind of laminate finish. With gloved fingers and a throw-away chip brush, please proceed to lay on a thick gooey mess of dark-walnut stain onto your slick honey-colored surface. Pray to the gods that the color will eventually take and not roll off the sides. Take a rag and wipe off as much as you can without rubbing off the color altogether. Keep rubbing it off, spreading the layer of oil thinner and thinner with your chip brush in the direction of the grain. Keep doing this. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Notice drips and repeat. Come back an hour later, find more drips and repeat.
Put fan on surface. Put oversized fan on surface. Come back an hour later and find wood chips and human hair embedded in surface and the finish too tacky to remove said pieces. Curse and leave it until tomorrow.
Next Morning: Stil tacky. Gross. Rub rag over surface in direction of grain until faux dry. Around 12pm add second layer of black walnut. Repeat steps from first day. Realize that the damp air will not let it dry under any circumstance and move table carefully (probably up an elevator and through a narrow hallway) to a room where you can climate control everything and keep the air dry. Put two fans on it and stink up the room. Wait until tomorrow.
3rd Morning: ALMOST dry......... but Still tacky. Curse words. What to do???
Ta-da!!! Spray matte finish to the rescue!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Seal in all the tacky gross oil parts by pretending they don't really exist.
Except... what is that chalky residue???
Whip out the LEMON PLEDGE ::sparkle sparkle:: and proceed to polish the matte finish.
ANNNDDD.... it's dry and shiny! Yayy!!!!!!!!!!!
Now, no one touch it for like... 5 hours. K thxneverdoingthatagainbye!
~~~~~~~~~~~I just realized that by this point, you might be asking yourself "How do I AVOID a ghetto refinishing experience?" SO glad you asked! Although I encourage everyone who works in theatre to fudge up as much as possible, A few friendly tips can help these sorts of exacerbating headaches.
A) Know the end goal of your piece of furniture BEFORE your purchase. Or in any case, the director's, designer's or other head honcho's end goal. Sometimes this is impossible. Some people like to feel the way the wind is blowing in the morning in order to make a decision about furniture. Some people like the Meisner approach and want to see the furniture become the Horse of a Different Color before going back to the original shade. One can never tell.
B) Purchase a piece close to your end goal desired result. One coat to make something more red or more tan is much easier/faster to do than three.
C) Purchase a piece of furniture with unfinished wood. Choose your own Adventure!!!!
D) Strip the furniture before refinishing! Which gives you TWO roads in the wood to walk down: Stripping and Sanding. And like the journey through the River of the Dead, you must sacrifice a part of your body in order to make it to the end of the road- either your lungs or your hands. Using a wood stripper, the more potent the chemical, the more likely you are to feel the burn in your lungs (but that paint sure do run right off!) The more "organic" and safe versions will take forever but you can practicaly bathe in the stuff (Jessica Moretti does not endorse this. Please follow the instructions on your bottle).
If you sand, you'll end up rotating between radial sanders and square hand sanders, getting really into it, praying to the Sanding gods and chanting their names under your breath as your hand starts feeling a less-than-pleasant buzzing that doesn't really leave after you're done. Beware of White Hand- a condition that destroys the muscles in your hand due to too much sanding. I'm not joking.
Either one of these techniques will be quite successful! But if you choose either one, you will probably need 5 days to complete the process with the staining just FYI.
E) If, like me, you were stopped at every step of the way from making a healthier furniture choice, the best thing you can do is get the piece into a warm, dry area. Having a dehumidifier is a really great trick, if you can move the piece into a small, dry room.
Other than that... good luck!
-J
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