Speaking of shopping, (see Question of the Week), there's a little place in east Toronto I like to visit called Frontier Sales. It's a hit-or-miss second hand furniture store that does have some of the best prices around. I pulled my solid oak writing desk out of there for $125, and the same day I found it, I picked up these two chairs (above), for $20 a piece.
I was immediately attracted to their '50s shape and solid-wood construction, but my husband had a vehement reaction to their pea-soup stain and so banished them to the basement until such time that I would strip them of their shame.
That was three years ago.
A few days ago, it was decided that their time had come. I hauled them up onto the front lawn, and by stripping that awful '50s pea-soup stain I would strip them of the despair of languishing in my loathsome basement (where various other furniture awaits my wayward attention, like The People Under the Stairs.)
Well now I know why I waited three years to do this -- it was a horrendous pain! The chairs bore some kind of nuclear, experimental finish which only the '50s could have produced. Stripping furniture I have done before, but THIS was something else...
Here's the short of it:
First I tried my trusty Circa 1850 Furniture Stripper -- which usually works -- but the stuff barely put a dent in it. Only the top, gelatinous layer of pea-stain came off, but it didn't even touch the white pickling-like base beneath it.
I tried soaking the surface and using steel wool to loosen it, which kind of worked, but unfortunately there was no way to take off the white chalk-like paste that resulted. I tried washing it off with paint thinner, but this only worked it in further.
I was forced to turn to the goopiest of goopy strippers, the Poly Super Strippa. It's a heavy duty semi-gel that eats through several layers at once, and indeed, it worked. But not without some serious effort, and a whole huge bottle of it later!
The second chair went much quicker. You can see the white 'membrane' (left) after a hose-down with water, easily removed with a stripping sponge.
Still, even thought the white layer was bubbling off, it was next to impossible to remove completely. I went through a bag full of rags and several rolls of paper towel. After soaking, scouring, wiping and scrubbing, I turned the hose on it in desperation.
Well...it worked! Something about the Poly Strippa has it turning into a rubbery membrane when mixed with water. If you put the hose on 'blast', you can blast away the membrane in seconds! It took me two whole days of agony (and a heck of a lot of dead braincells from inadvertent huffing) to figure this out!
So, from whatever braincells I have left, to yours, here's what you should do if you're looking to strip a similar, egregious specimen:
- Soak the area in Poly Super Strippa, leave it for about 3 minutes, and blast if off with the hose.
- Make sure you do this on a plastic sheet by an outdoor drain - this stuff will kill your grass and god knows what else.
- Some of the 'membrane' will inevitably remain, but this is easy enough to sand off with a stripping sponge.
Though this was a hard-won lesson, look how lovely my beauties are! True swans whiled away beneath that ugly duckling disguise... The hubby loves them too, and I quote, "I changed my mind about these chairs - the wood is gorgeous." Yeah, now that I've gone cross-eyed and can't do my timetables...
Ever encountered such problem in stripping furniture?
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