How To Repair Spots On Wood Furniture

Unless you lot live in a museum, your furniture takes a lot of hits. Wet spectacles leave backside white rings. Daily use wears away the finish on the edges of tables and chairs. And so there are all the little scratches, dents, and divots that mysteriously appear on forest surfaces. Don't despair.

This kind of superficial damage can be fixed quickly and easily without harming your furniture or your wallet. (If you have a fine piece of antique furniture, y'all may want to get out repair to a professional restorer.)

How to Fix Scratches on Wood

The piece of cake techniques for restoring old piece of furniture on the following pages will work on whatever clear finish—lacquer, varnish, polyurethane, or shellac. You'll find the few materials you'll demand, such as denatured alcohol, wax sticks, and affect-up markers, in the paint and finishes alley at nigh habitation-improvement stores. Look for scratch-comprehend polish in the cleaning-supplies department.

Earlier tackling any repairs, clean the furniture thoroughly with a solution of dishwashing liquid or Tater Oil Soap and water to remove all wax, grease, oil, or smoothen. Once you've cleaned the piece, make repairs in this order: white water rings first, followed by minor surface scratches, deep scratches, and and then dings and nicks. Subsequently that, all yous need practice to go on a stop looking its best is to dust with a damp cloth, wipe up spills as soon as possible, and occasionally make clean off whatsoever grease and dirt with balmy dishwashing soap and water.

Water Stains

White rings, acquired when water vapor penetrates into a finish, tin can be removed by wiping them gently with a cloth barely dampened with denatured alcohol. (Blackness rings indicate damaged wood and require complete removal of the surrounding finish before any repair can be attempted.) Too much alcohol can dull the end. If that happens, restore a satin sheen by rubbing with actress-fine 0000 steel wool and paste wax. To bring back a gloss finish, use auto polishing compound applied with a rag. To make the repair blend in, go over the damaged area and the entire adjacent surface.

Shallow Chips

Where a articulate finish is chipped just the underlying color is intact, fill the ding with a few drops of clear nail polish. After the smooth dries, sand affluent with 600-grit sandpaper. To restore the sheen on satin finishes, rub with 0000 steel wool and paste wax; for gloss finishes, apply auto polishing compound and a rag.

Large Scratches and Worn Edges

Felt-tip impact-up markers come up in a multifariousness of wood tones to friction match common piece of furniture finishes. Apply them to colour large scratches or edges where the stain has worn away. Utilise merely to damaged areas, and wipe immediately if any gets on the neighboring finish.

Apply a coat of paste wax over the repair and the entire side by side surface to impart an even sheen.

Gouges, Nicks, and Dings

Footstep 1

Sand Slightly to Level Forest

A gouge sometimes has a slightly raised burr around its perimeter. Level it by sanding lightly with 600-grit paper.

Step ii

Select Wax Stick

Side by side, cull a wax stick that closely matches the terminate, or blend two or more sticks together (in your manus or in the gouge) to go only the correct colour. Rub the stick over the gouge until it's slightly overfilled with wax.

Step 3

Scrape Backlog and Utilize Coat of Wax

Scrape off the excess wax with the edge of a credit card. The wax should merely fill the gouge; rub off any wax on the surrounding surface with a piece of a brownish paper bag wrapped effectually a flat cake.

Apply a coat of paste wax over the repair and the entire side by side surface to impart an even sheen.

Keeping Information technology Clean

On the shelves of supermarkets, hardware stores, and home-improvement centers you tin find dozens of products that promise to clean, pick upwardly grit, impart smoothen, add together a overnice aroma—or all of the to a higher place—to your piece of furniture. The truth is that although none of them will do your finish whatsoever damage, none is admittedly necessary to go along furniture looking its best.

Dusting with a dry cloth generates friction, which creates a slight static accuse on the surface that in turn attracts more grit. Dusting/polishing sprays, such as Pledge, reduce the static and assistance the rag agree the grit, but a damp cloth does both these things just equally well. Some sprays leave behind a thin motion-picture show of oil that temporarily adds shine, but the oil acts like a magnet for whatsoever dust lands on it.

For routine cleaning, diluted dishwashing soap or furniture cleaner such every bit Murphy Oil Soap is gentle and constructive. Avoid potent element of group i- or ammonia-based detergents (like window cleaners); they can harm some finishes. And never use scrubbing cleansers, which contain abrasives that will boring almost any sheen.