We have an antique wooden sofa which is more than twice of my age. This sofa served the family for more than four decades and it's my turn to payback it's services. It's been years pass since I personally do projects like this. I usually hire a person that will do the job for me, since I am free and boredom is killing me, why don't make a project that will benefit my luxurious living in my humble abode. He he he...

Anyway, the first thing that I do is to determine which project will be the easiest and less expensive, since I don't have enough budget to spare for this project to be materialized. Then out of all furniture's that we have inside our house, I choose one and the criteria is that whatever happens in the middle of the restoration process, this will be pushed through to complete. Then suddenly all my attentions focus to the antique wooden sofa of ours.

I asked my Tita for a hand to help me bring down the sofa to the garage pathway. There, I can easily work without worrying other obstacles such as work area, cleaning of dirt and residue, and lastly the amount of time consume in drying from the stain and varnished applied. The sofa is now placed on the ground and ready to be worked on. I started to scrape all the stain and varnished that been applied to the chair. This will later help me to evenly distribute the color of the stain and varnish that will be applied.

I use a knife as a scraping tool. Note: Carefully scrape and peel only the varnish / stain and avoid making damage on the wood. After the peeling, sand the whole chair by 400 grit sand paper to eliminate the excess residue and to smoothen its body.

Here is the sample pic of the sofa after the peeling and sanding.


Then wash the wooden sofa with water. Make sure that you'll scrub it so that all the residue will be wash away. Then wipe it with dry rug and let it dry afterwards...


Now, touch the wood. If you felt it is already dry, wipe again with a rug to remove the dust and apply a wood stain to be it's first coating. Remember to mix first the stain before applying to the wood. This can bring better colorization of the wood. I used an oil based wood stain color Mahogany.


If your not satisfied with the color or you see the color is too light or pale, you can either re-coat it again with wood stain until you achieved the color that you want for your sofa. In my case, I have coat it for 3 times.


Then after the stain is dry enough, select a varnish to be applied. A varnish can help the wood achieve the glossiness of the color desired and as a protective shield against termite and other elemental factor that will cause the fast deterioration of the wood. You can either apply a varnish that has no added color (on others they call it Natural), or the one with added wood coloring. In my case, I'd like to balance the dark coloration of the wood stain and the light coloration of the varnish so the color that I chose is Maple. You can also use Mahogany, it does not matter even if the two color does not match coz until you're satisfied with the outcome, it should be fine.


I apply the varnish 3 times until I'm satisfied with the glossiness of the wood.


Here is the pic of the final outcome.



Next project: Painting antique wooden Bookshelves.