An easy guide for stripping wood furniture!

Hey guys! Thanks so much for checking out my latest blog post.  I wanted to do a quick tutorial on using Citristrip to strip finishes from your furniture. I feel like a lot of flippers don’t know about it or feel intimidated to try it. It is such an awesome product and will save you hours ….. and tons of sand paper….. plus maybe some of your sanity! This blog may contain some affiliate links at no additional cost to you! So first things first, Citristrip is a stripping gel that removes paint and varnishes from furniture.  I love this one because it is so much safer, biodegradable and smells amazing! In fact is so safe that you can even use it indoors.  Now I’ve heard people say they layer it on and wrap it in plastic and leave it and yadayadayada.  I don’t do any of that stuff and I feel like my system is pretty simple, straightforward and effective. I chose an old buffet sideboard to use for my tutorial that had been found inside an old shed. It had lots of old white paint and tons of dirt too. I’m digging the patina of the paint but I wanted to strip the top and stain it for more of a farmhouse look. So here’s what I started with:

As you can see, its not a pretty sight. Now I could start right off with the sander but if there is veneer under here and I sand too deep then that’s it, the stain will never be even. Plus it takes a lot of elbow grease, starting with 80 grit and then working my way up to 220. So citristrip it is!

When using citristrip you need the gel, a chip brush, a scraper, and a plastic bag.  I just use a putty knife with a thin edge.

You pour out the gel, and use your chip brush ( I like to buy my brushes in bulk here to save money and I’m forever finding uses for them!) to spread it out in an even layer all over the top of your piece.

After it is spread out I let it sit for about 15 minutes. I’m usually working on 2-3 pieces at a time so I head on over to do a coat on a piece or something while waiting. You know the saying about a watched pot. After said time I get my handy dandy scraper and in long swipes I just slide it down collecting the old gel and paint. after each swipe I drop, drip, wipe the sludge (you’ll see what I mean) into my little plastic bag I have nearby. after the first scrape back my buffet looked like this:

Making small progress, seeing some wood in there but still a ways to go. So round two with the gel, pour it on, spread it out and wait another 15 minutes. Like I said I can always find something to do while I’m waiting and stay productive! Does Facebook count as being productive lololol.

So after this coat (2nd) has sat for about 15 minutes I head back over and start swiping. YOU GUYS I GASPED when I saw what was popping out!!!! Do you see it!!!!

I could not believe that TIGER OAK was hiding under all that old paint! As you can see there were still a few trouble spots so I excitedly applied one more layer of citristrip. So at this point I’ve spent about 10 minutes pouring, spreading and scraping and was able to work on other projects for a good 30 minutes. This I why I love this gel. It does all the hard work so I can multitask and get other stuff done. So any way here is some great pics of the soaking process. You can see the old paint literally raising away from the finish.

So after I scraped away the last bit of old paint I simply wiped the top down with a dampened wash cloth rinsing it out every so often to get rid of any residual gel. How STUNNING is that wood?!? 

Now I will still go over the top with some 220 grit paper to make sure there are no rough spots and to give a smooth space for the new stain to take hold. But over all I love using Citristrip because its fast and easy and I can do other things while I’m waiting for it to work its magic instead of being tied down with a loud sander for 45 minutes.  You can find it here if your wanting to try it for yourself or Lowes and Home Depot carry it as well!

If you love Citristrip too or found this post helpful I would love to hear from you in the comments below! And don’t forget to sign up for my Thrifty Insider Newsletter while your here! 

XOXO,

Amanda