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DIY Wood Furniture Refinishing

A simple DIY solution for worn outdoor furniture, this wood furniture refinishing gives older pieces new life and longevity.

Click to read also: Easy DIY Curb Appeal Project: Paint the Porch

A simple DIY solution for worn outdoor furniture, this wood furniture refinishing gives older pieces new life and longevity.

We bought these Adirondack style chairs from IKEA a few years ago. We live in California, and over the years the sun really wore them down.

Fortunately, wood furniture is pretty easy to refinish, even for amateur DIY-ers like us.

How to Refinish Wood Furniture

Outdoor furniture refresh

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For a project like this, where the wood damage is only on the surface, it’s pretty easy to repair and refinish furniture. We only needed to buy a few things from the store.

Materials for Refinishing Wood

  • Sander. We used this Ryobi battery powered sander, and it worked well. I like that it has a small pouch that collects most of the dust that is generated while sanding.
  • Outdoor wood stain. I think ours was from IKEA, but I couldn’t find the exact one we used. So this is just a link to a search for the basic type of product. Water based stains often work well and give off fewer fumes.
  • Paintbrushes for applying the stain.
  • We also recommend a face mask for sanding.

Sanding Down the Wood

freshly sanded chairs waiting to be stained

We completely forgot to take photos before sanding, but here are the chairs sanded down with our little Ryobi battery powered sander. It worked really well! We just sanded off the rough parts of the chair. For some reason the right arms of our chairs were a lot more worn down than the left ones. Maybe it’s because they get more sun on that side based on where they are in the yard. Sun can be pretty hard on furniture.

How to Restain Wood Furniture

painting furniture to give it new life

Once our chairs were sanded down, it was time to paint! We used a groundcloth, but I don’t think any paint even got on it.

We have learned that it’s worth paying for a higher quality paintbrushes. It saves the hassle of lost bristles, and the brushes can be re-used for future projects if you clean them off well when you are finished.

sanded and painted chairs

My kids actually did all of the sanding and staining, and our chairs look fantastic.

repainted chairs

In fact, they still look fantastic a year later! Yes, it took me an entire year to actually write this post.

What is your favorite at-home DIY project?

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MaryAnne at Mama Smiles

MaryAnne is a craft loving educator, musician, photographer, and writer who lives in Silicon Valley with her husband Mike and their four children.

2 thoughts on “DIY Wood Furniture Refinishing”

    1. Well worth paying for, for sure! I also learned (the hard way) that cheap paint is usually not worth the low price – requires more coats so you end up paying about the same price with a lot more labor.

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