How Sunset refinishes outdoor furniture - magazine-provided techniques

Sunset, March, 1995 by Bill Crosby

Between 1951 and the mid-'70s. craftman Martin Nelson built about two dozen "ranch-style" redwood benches and tables for the grounds of Sunset's headquarters in Menio Park, California. These elegant pieces have withstood repeated rain soaking and sun baking because they have been extremely well cared for. For the past 15 years, keeping the outdoor furniture in top condition has been mainly the responsibility of assistant building supervisor Tony Soria.

Tony taught me how he refinishes "the Sunset way" on a neglected picnic set that had been taken out of commission and was. in Tony's words, "about a year away from being nothing but firewood." This worst extreme seemed a perfect piece to revive; it had a lot in common with the distressed treasures one might find at a garage sale or swap meet and, frankly, pass over because the restoration seems too daunting a task. The process revealed no huge secrets; it just took patience, attention to detail, and hard work.

Tony's method is to strip off the old finish, sand the raw wood smooth, stain the wood to overcome sun bleaching, and then apply multiple coats of spar varnish, his preferred finish because of its durability and appearance. His finished pieces look almost too good to sit outside, but that's just what the finish is made for. We worked in a very well ventilated garage, and took appropriate precautions such as using gloves and dust masks.

Stripping. Removing all the old finish from the picnic table and benches took three days. I tried three new alternatives to scary old methylene chloride-based stripper (which can irritate skin and eyes, has noxious vapors, and is poisonous). Even after sitting on the tabletop for hours, the new strippers barely etched the old finish. This is not to say the new stripping compounds don't work well on some finishes; the existing spar varnish was simply too tenacious for them.

The methylene chloride, on the other hand, went to work almost immediately. The old finish began blistering after half a minute and was ready to scrape off in 5. It's important to note one of Tony's main points on the process: plan on using lots of materials. I used a gallon of Jasco Speedomatic stripper (labeled as paint remover) on the project. I scraped the first couple of coats off with a putty knife ("don't use anything sharper," Tony warned). Once the finish appeared to be off, I put on another coat of stripper, then removed it with steel wool ("use coarse wool, not the O-rated grades, and rub with the grain"). Per Tony's instruction, I scraped all the globs of stripper and old finish into an old cardboard box and waited until all the solvent had evaporated. Once completely dry, these remaining solids are safe to throw away.

Where a putty knife wouldn't work around the tight spaces on the bench legs, I had to use just steel wool. When the stripping was completed, I wiped down all the surfaces with rags soaked in lacquer thinner to clean any remaining stripper off the wood. Though the stripper label says you can use water for this step, Tony prefers using thinner because it dries faster and doesn't raise the wood's grain. Again, be generous with the material. I went through a gallon of thinner, two packs of steel wool, and most of a bag of shop rags. When the steel wool gets gummed up or a rag gets too dirty, get a fresh one. On parts of the legs, I had to clean partially stripped surfaces with thinner to see where I'd missed with the stripper.

Sanding. If anything is messier than stripping, it's sanding. Sanding took another solid day and covered everything with red sawdust. I used an orbital sander where there was sufficient surface area, and hand-sanded the rest. Tony advised starting with 80-grit paper, then finishing with 100. After I had sanded all the surfaces smooth, I wiped everything down with lacquer thinner.

Staining. Maybe with new wood you could forgo this step, but this old picnic set wasn't just bleached; it was badly discolored where the finish had failed in an uneven way. Tony had me rub in a generous coat of Olympic semitransparent stain 729. It looked way too dark to me at first. "Don't worry," Tony said. "Once it gets the varnish and gets outside, it'll be plenty light." The stain did turn the wood a remarkably uniform color, and it was nice to be onto a phase of the project that took only an hour. The stain was left to dry for a day before the first coat of varnish was applied.

Varnishing. Three coats of spar varnish (with a day between coats) completed the project. Instead of applying the varnish right out of the can, I poured some into an old coffee can cleaned with lacquer thinner. "You pick up some stain as you brush on the varnish, and you don't want that back in the can," Tony said. Between the first and second coats, I hand-sanded lightly with 220-grit paper. "Don't rub too hard or you'll pull the finish right off," Tony said. The third coat went on right over the second with no sanding.

Finished? Nothing is more fleeting than an exterior wood finish; it starts to degrade the second you put the piece outside. There's a reason owners of wooden boats are always working on them, and the same is true of wood on land. Covering tabletops and benches when they're not in use is a good idea. If you leave the pieces out, you're going to need to give them an annual tune-up--a light hand-sanding with 220-grit paper, a cleaning with paint (not lacquer) thinner, and a coat or two of spar varnish. Over time, the sun will leach the stain out of the wood, so figure on repeating the whole refinishing process on exposed horizontal surfaces every five to seven years.