How To Restore a G-Plan Nest of Tables (Mid-Century Teak Furniture)

[Music] [Applause] hi welcome to guildboy's youtube channel in this video presentation i want to demonstrate how you can easily strip and refinish your g-plan mid-century teak coffee tables or teak furniture this process can be applied to all sorts of fellowship but for this one it's this lovely g-plan suite of three coffee tables and i'll just crack straight on and show you what you need to do this process so first of all all the health and safety we need some gloves for the stripper some coarse wire wool now you wear gloves these fine strands of wire here can cut your fingers so really you want to be handling them with the gloves on but that sort of removal of all of the polish later on um some coarse sandpaper this is 120 grit there you go 120 grit sandpaper a sanding block for sanding the surface with this block actually is one i made or have since i was an apprentice it's just a lump of hardwood i think it's a hardwood in there with a piece of carpet that's just a piece of carpet it's been glued to it so it's a nice easy thing to make at home down to buy a sanding block um mask stripper now the stripper i'm going to be using actually is an industrial chemical one which we're under licence to use in here um it's fast acting the ones you can buy at the domestic sort of areas is they're going to be water-based i would have thought and they're not going to be quite as fast acting but the process i'm showing here you will still get the same results with it but i will also be neutralizing this afterwards again i don't know whether you need to do it but i'll touch that later on a scrape of some sorts to scrape away all the goo and gunk off the table some goggles and this is just a decorator's painting tray to slop all of the stuff into so you don't need too much stuff really right let's crack on let's drop that down sorry if it gets a bit muffled from here on in but i've got to put a mask on [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] so like i said a minute ago this is a chemical stripper solvent based one application of stripper it's the same as you do for the water-based one it's not a case of painting it on the surface and just want to pour it on and move it around like so and the glasses are fogged up and i can't see anything but still there we go you want to get lots of this stuff on don't be shy with stripper you really want it to bite into the surface obviously you'd probably be doing this outside or in a garage you wouldn't necessarily do this inside i don't think you'd be too popular see i'm just moving it around i want it to penetrate into that two-pack polyurethane original finish that they have here which is common on g-plan all that mid-century furniture it's a really good finish actually it was really hard finish and what we hope to do today is replicate that finish but in some just some easy steps really it's just a strip sand seal and wax so i'm just moving it around on the surface as it dries into into that old finish that's there there you go let the stripper do the work now there is a i have been having a few emails um from people who've been using a different type of stripper where you lay the stripper on like this and then put cling film over it and leave it um i'm sure it does work i'm sure it does work quite well but the thing is is if you put cling film over a stripper you're forcing all those chemicals into the surface of the wood because if it dissolves the finish and then forces into the wood it's going to stay there if you leave it for hours the problem is then once you've cleaned it all back it might seep back through and the finished drying that you're going to apply to it so i don't really like the idea of putting cling film over it it needs to soften the finish we're going to get at it and strip it off as soon as it's soft i'm not going to leave it on there for hours and hours and hours because i don't want it damaging and getting into the wood we're going to do this process three times to make sure it's cleanly stripped it's really important to make sure you get all of the old finish preparation is key i think let's have a little look so this is a palette knife a decorator's knife filler knife different names yeah see there was that although it's a great finish it's a very thin finish that was on this table and the strip has done its work it's straight through to the teak beneath here yep okay so that's where i'm going to get this tray i'm going to tuck it under the end i'm going to just work my way down actually that's quite that's quite liquid in there i could actually reuse that we could actually move that to save you know money that's still good stripper in there we could put that back on there for the second strip i can already hear some of you saying why why bother stripping why don't you just sand it why go through all the pain of you know all the gloves and masks and goggles why don't you just sand it well if you were to sand this just hit it with a sander there's every chance you'll go through the veneer and it is veneered the hardwood this is this lip around the outside is hardwood with solid teak but this is a core of chipboard or mdf it's probably chipboard and then veneered so if you hit it with a sander you could go through and i'll demonstrate that later on on another video which maybe have a look out for that i've got another g plan table that i'm going to cut in half and i'm going to demonstrate the thickness of the veneer so that's why i'm stripping it i don't want really to do much sanding it's just a light sand once it's stripped now you can see obviously i've just concentrated on the top i haven't done the legs yet you don't necessarily have to do the legs i will do the legs but if you don't want to you can put masking tape and mask off the legs and just strip and refinish the top if you don't want if the legs are in good condition why bother just do the top but i am going to carry on and do do the rest of it so we've had the first strip now the second i'm going to use this coarse wire wool i'm just going to tease it open a bit i'm just going to scrub scrub it clean you can see it all coming off there look so i'm going to tease it open again change the face and get a fresh bit well that's twice and it's gone but i am going to do it three times i can't help it it needs to be done three times i was always taught to do it three times and you really want to make sure everything is gone so i'm gonna put a third application the stripper on not too heavy this time i don't need to i'm just going to make it wet with stripper see i'm not taking the brush off and slapping it around you keep the brush on the surface as much as possible clean piece now this time i want to scrub it dry so in effect the wire wool is almost sanding the surface you see that's the third strip and you can see it's still coming off okay there you go a clean strip now we're ready to have a light sand then i'm going to neutralize let it dry light sand a little bit and start finishing it's that quick obviously i'm going to strip the base now actually that's the next thing i'm going to do we've done the top i'm going to do the base [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] so i've just moved the table at an angle so you can see this but you can see the reaction of the stripper as it hits the polish the old finish that's there and you can see look watch that look at that immediately it bites in and it fries up and reacts you can see that straight away working i think i mentioned this in the other video i did that my old former my old boss absolutely loved this this process really really enjoyed this process in fact he enjoyed it more than the actual french polishing and furniture finishing he just really enjoyed stripping furniture it's revealing all the old the wood beneath the old finish i'm not going to use the um scrapes or the i'm not going to use these tools at all for this bit i'm just going to go straight in with the wire wool to clean the frame because obviously it's a bit more awkward and it's easier to use the wire wall [Music] as the wire wall clogs up just keep on turning the face of it just open it up and get fresh wire wool around it you can reuse this wire wall once it all clogs up leave it alone for a while if the polish the old finish all the gunk dries you can tease it without shaking out like it's doing here on the surface and use it again okay so that's that's the first strip of the base i'll do another two times but you see it's quite quick really okay so that's that's the third strip of the legs uh on this table i've done the other two tables now we're at the point we're going to lightly sand the surface before i neutralize and the reason i'm going to sand it straight after applying the stripper and cleaning it all back is because if there are any traces of wire wall there any traces left of this coarse wire wall on the surface and i was to neutralize there may it may have a reaction and little bits of i think it's like an iron oxide that comes off and burns in the table it reacts with the natural tannins oak especially if you're doing this on oak uh definitely sand and then neutralize if you need to don't go straight with the neutralizer because the chances are you little burn marks from the reaction a chemical reaction that happens with this wire wall so that is why i'm going to sand now then i'm going to neutralize then we'll do a light little flick over with 180 grit sandpaper just before we'll let that dry overnight and then we'll seal and then go on the rest of the process of finishing all right i think i'll put my goggles back on because save dust going in my eyes all right this is 120 or you can't see it on there but it's 120 grit sandpaper i'm just going to sand the top with the grain i'm not going to go across the grain with this it's too rough i just want to key up this surface which will also help when i neutralize so there you go and also as i'm here i might tip this up a little bit so you can see it better this center panel here is veneered teak outside the frame of this table is solid teak and obviously the grain on the outside here and here is going across so i'm going to stop sanding i'm going to stop around that edge because i don't want to cross sand that area because i'm just going to have to sand it out so i'm going to try and keep with the grain as i'm working my way around oh and one other thing one other thing i'm using a block and sandpaper as opposed to a big orbital sander as for the reason i just mentioned minutes ago this is a veneer um and i've gone through veneers before in the past which always has not always happened it has happened before in the past so i think to be safe hand sanding when you're dealing with anything that's veneer based otherwise you can go through and if you go through well there's another video i'm going to produce a video there's where we're showing on probably one of these g plan tables where i've sanded through and you have to color it um it's a tricky thing i enjoy doing it as a french polisher furniture restore it's not something you really do at home because if you sand through that's it it's game over really because you can't really remedy it unless you try staining it down but it still shows but now that's why i'm using a block [Applause] [Music] try not to come over onto the edge here to you'll get cross-grain scratches going in the surface here so just be careful around where the grain meets grain at 90 degrees just get your eye close to the surface now there'll be some people out there saying why are you using such coarse paper you don't have to go quite as coarse as this if you don't want to this has got varying colors over this and i just wanted to key the surface in you can just sand this after you stripped with maybe a 180 or 240 or if you really don't want to touch it at all and you want to preserve every single mark ding dent and color on it then don't sand it don't sand it at all so that's the sort of thing i would do when i'm stripping antique period furniture where the finish is really bad but you want to preserve the patina and the marks and dings and dents in the surface and refinish it if you want to do that that's fair enough there's nothing to stop you but for this purpose i wanted to key into it also the other thing you might find is little scratches and marks don't if you've got a scratch on a surface i'm going to do a little line here maybe pretend there's a a scratch there you've got a cross grain scratch don't start just keep on sanding the same area don't continually sand that area just keep on sanding around the whole top because if you concentrate in an area you will tend to find that you will you'll dip it slightly and this being a veneer is a chance you'll sand through so be very careful speaking of veneers under here this is a mahogany veneer which is the balance veneer on the back of here you can see that that's mahogany there it's mellowed and darkened down but that's the same and that's the balance veneer for the teak and i say a balance because if you didn't have a veneer underneath the veneer on top this would warp and twist because it's probably got a chipboard core but just to show you how thin a veneer is i don't know how clever jack's camera skills are how close he can go to that but that is thin really really thin but that's what a veneer but there's nothing wrong with veneer there's nothing wrong with it it's all look how well it's lasted for 40 odd years 40 50 years and so but you've got to be careful when you're sanding another thing to look out for when you're stripping furniture is this return edge under here this lip just make sure you clean it because it's it's just good sort of practice to make sure that this isn't got claggy bits of old um finish and stripper or anything under here so make sure you clean it off right i think we're done so now you can use the vacuum to suck off all that dust i am going to neutralize let that dry then a very gentle flick over the 180 and then we'll start the finishing process [Music] right neutralizing so i need to neutralize the stripper that i've put on there you may not need to do this have a look on the side of the tin that you're using for your stripper you might not need to neutralize it depends on the uh what the solvent is with water but you might just wash it over i don't know but i'm going to use methylated spirits or denatured alcohol with a splash of acetic acid which is vinegar pickling vinegar so if you had maybe a 100 ml or 200 ml of methylated spirits about 15 or 20 ml of of acetic acid going in there and that will help neutralize this alkali stripper that i've used on here also i quite like using meths on the surface because then i get to see the true color of the timber and it sort of it points out any defects that i might have missed so using the methods wiping it over i'm going to use a kitchen scrubby squeegee thing oh there it is there it is so these one of these it's just a disposable kitchen scrubber that they're nothing pens mere pennies but they're brilliant for this purpose because they've got my life scrubby surface so anyway slightly more user-friendly gloves check the old eyes right okay so i'm going to put in maybe there's about 200 ml of meths this is our acetic acid you can just use pickling vinegar just doesn't matter i've got a bit of there we go that's enough [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] all right there we go so that's neutralized i'll do the other two smaller tables let them dry for half an hour so then we're gonna lightly sand it and get on with the sealing process so we're at the stage now where i want to lightly sand the surface before putting the sealer coat um our first sealer coat on here and i just noticed something that i hadn't seen before now and that is there is a small ding or dent in the surface if i hold that up it's just there now given what i've just been saying about veneers and things and sanding i can't go attacking that with sandpaper to get rid of it although it's quite small but it will possibly will show up and it will ruin what is pretty much a perfect finish so there is there is a little trick and a little trick of the trade here i'm going to show you anyone can do this and especially with veneers it's quite a good one to do so i'm going to show you how to get rid of that well hopefully hopefully get rid of it i think it will work by using an iron and some steam and should be quite dramatic stuff but let's give it a go okay for the purposes of the best way to steam this out i'm going to use some of our pure cotton cloth i've mentioned before how versatile this stuff and it really is i'm going to soak this in water i'm going to cut off i don't know so maybe about about that amount i'm going to soak it now in some water there's already water straight over the top of that ding indent and then with a really hot hot iron an old iron i don't know maybe you'll just steal an iron from somewhere and in we go okay so i'm just placing this really quite wet cloth on the surface here as you can see and then the iron tip of the iron on its hottest setting in and the idea is it forces steam water to raise the fibres of the wood okay so i just used the hairdryer there to take off the excess water that was around the outside um i don't want water lying on the surface of the veneer don't want to get near that chipboard underneath and then be in trouble yeah so now i think i can still just about see it it has raised it you've got to be careful as you saw when i was applying the uh the iron to that i was being very very cautious uh it it's something you can learn maybe practice on something that's uh you're not too worried about first of all and now i'm gonna sand this uh again with the 180 and if there is any small little i mean it's tiny to be fair i don't think you're gonna notice it i think it's worked again 180 foam-backed paper block you notice again i didn't concentrate sanding here sand the whole top uh it's so tempting just to sand in one area but honestly just if you sand the whole the rest of the surface it all ties in and actually it's worked a treat because i can't even see where it was so it did work so i can show you i can't see it possibly because i'm not wearing my glasses but actually it's gone thank michael but be very careful be very careful using that technique practice on something else to start with but yeah it's worked it's worked to treat um i think we're at the point now of sealing up now my preferred choice of sealer is a hard wax oil i like to use the soft satin or matte satin is my preference for this you can use anything you like you use varnish you can use wipe on poly you can use linseed oil you can use tongue or you can use teak oil you can use danish oil you can brush on lacquers it's entirely up to you but it may take a lot longer than you think when you're using those different things um it depends if you're used to using them especially the oils the hard wax oils that are out i think are lovely i think a really nice product and it dries quickly and gives you a professional looking finish and you don't need huge amounts of experience to use it and it doesn't penetrate in so that's what i'm going to use and use a hard wax oil soft satin finish to it i've diluted it to start with just by ten percent talking about it is here hard whack so i'm gonna place it a ring no it would be okay that's the stuff um i've diluted it ten percent uh white spirit i mean the the manufacturers you can have whatever the manufacturer says but i put some i think a pure turpentine in this because it's oil based and i'm going to apply it liberally to the surface using our cloths again these stuff our class these 100 pure cotton cloths are brilliant for applying products and we use it for stain we use it for buffing cloths we use it for fading for french polish but in this circumstance i'm going to use it to apply the hard wax oil i'm just going to shape it into a fad and it's i'm going to stick that in there now well i'm going to put some gloves on first and then stick it in there and it would be absorbed into the cloth and which means i can control the amount of hard wax oil that comes out onto the surface as opposed to a brush if you use a brush you get a lot of wax oil will come out hard wax oil that will come out or whatever it is you're applying to one area you're gonna have to move it around on the table whereas applying it with a cloth which is my preference it's just a thing that i would like to do it's more controllable there we go let's put some gloves on i can see the level of the fluid going down as it soaks in okay so i'm just going to start with this top right hand corner to me and work my way across [Music] so i'm just evening out what i've just applied oh boom look at that that's it i'm going to leave that alone well i'm going to do the frame and do the other tables i'm going to leave that alone leave it overnight and then tomorrow we'll come back lightly de-nib the surface with 320 grit soft sandpaper soft black sandpaper and then either wax it or maybe give it another coat of hard wax or and then wax polish it but you can see look at that that beautiful obviously it's not going to stay shiny like that it's just because it's gone on wet [Music] yeah sealed up let's do the other two tables and let that dry overnight [Music] okay so these have been drying for 24 hours that first application of hard wax oil has has worked wonders actually i think they look lovely i could lightly sand this with maybe some like 320 and re-coat them i quite like this sort of really matte look that they've got even though i use the satin finished hard wax oil so i think what i'm going to do is i'm going to wax these uh now so i'm going to go for a straight seal and then a wax finish and i'm going to use i'm going to use our rose gold on here which has a sort of a brown feel to it a brownie brown mahogany color really that i think will help just sort of enhance this finish here so that's what i'll do i'm going to use our soft wire wool this is not the coarse this is the soft wire wall that's not available on our website really soft like cotton wool i'm going to apply the wax with it over the surface leave it for 20 minutes and then buff and we have a soft sheet there you go there's our our rose gold it looks quite dark but it's actually not that dark and a bit of our wild bull i'm just going to make a little soft pad out of it and then i'm going to charge just working it around warming the wax up getting it into the wire wool i'm not going to dab this because i don't want to put little marks over the table that potentially could stay there so i'm going to work from one end to the other with the grain continually recharging as i'm going along the action of using soft wire wool with the wax on the surface is actually lightly cutting it back at the same time it's almost de-nibbing it so it'll make it smooth it's still quite absorbent it's still sucking in the the wax has been taken straight out of the of the wire wall and taken into that sealed surface lovely so we've got breakfast abby's beeswax in there t1 grade carnauba wax berry wax miracle wax japan wax pure turpentine pure gum turpentine natural pine turpentine the best ingredients i could get you see i'm applying it with the grain any excess just taken off you just wipe off the excess with a dry bit of the wire wall i'm just going to do that front edge i can't really see it okay okay i'm gonna do the the frame of the table as well and obviously these these two here underneath i'm just gonna take them out wax the rest of the table and those two tables and then we'll leave it for 20 minutes or so you don't have to use you don't have to use the rose gold i could use the pure gold on this i just fancied getting that sort of little bit of extra color and warmth through when it buffs it just give it a little bit more [Music] okay so we've waited our 20 minutes or so i think it's just probably about half an hour uh and now we're ready to buff we wax polish this g plan table with some rose gold and now i'm going to buff it and we're going to use our buffing cloth again you don't have to use our buffing cloth but the reason that i like using ours is because it has a lovely open weave you get two buffing cloths and you order it from us if you order any uh of the sort of one litre tins it comes with it and the polishing kits obviously come with it but it's got a lovely open weave to the cloth 100 pure cotton what that means is when i start buffing it's not going to heat the wax up the wax is going to stay on the table and we're going to buff the wax to a soft sheen there might be a little bit of a transfer across but if you use other dusters or buffing cloths if it hasn't got an open weave to it you might end up smearing and getting the smudge marks and you don't really want that and you'll be thinking oh this wax isn't any good it's not really the wax it's because you're using a cloth that's creating friction in heat and you don't want that so that's why we use these buffing cloths with this cotton cloth which we use for lots of things right i'm just going to start buffing i'm going to buff half the table and see what happens and immediately i can see there's a lovely soft sheen it always makes me smile [Music] lovely soft sheens coming to that i hope the camera can pick that up hold up i'll show you in a second i'll just know if you can see that [Music] so that's half of it done to me here i can see the lights off like reflecting you can see it on the surface so we've just seen um let me buff this surface you can see it's got a lovely soft sheen now when you're doing this sort of finish you can have different sort of layers of sheen because of the way the nature of the timber and the way we've sort of sealed and waxed don't to get it to a back to a sort of dead soft even satin finish you can use the wire wool again and this is very commonly done within the french polishing world of dulling i just gonna use the wire wall i'm just gonna tease it open as i always do to make a pad and then i'm going to start the top corner i'm just going to go across the surface and with a little pressure not hard just a little pressure i'm just going to soften the polish the surface back down again and it will even up the wax on the surface and you get that lovely completely now soft sheen to it there's no sort of highlighted spots and a lovely finish i don't have to do that but it's just another little trick you can use the wire wall i've had emails before of people saying that you know there's little higher shiny spots before when they're wax polishing things and i said well just use a bit of wire wool just gently over the surface and it softens it back down again you get a lovely finish and that will harden now over a few days so if you wanted to maybe reapply wax you wanted to put we've we've done a rose gold on here maybe you want to put another coat on you want to go with the pure gold over the top no more color wait three or four days wait a week or so let this wax harden and then put your wax on top if you do it straight away you think i want to put another one all you're doing is putting wax soft wax onto soft wax and your chances are you could end up with a bit of a mess really because the pure turpentine will soak into the wax you've just applied and softened that up so let it harden first there's no rush come back and do it in a week's time and build up those wax layers and you end up with that lovely wax build up which is so so nice there you have it we've finished a very simple process hopefully easy to follow and you'll get professional looking results very quickly um please head to our website www.gilboys.co.uk nobody says www.anymore but i just did but there you are go to gilboys.co.uk and you find out lots more information about our polishes our products and furniture restoration and how to look after things uh speaking of looking after things if you want to continue looking after your tables and furniture lights you can wax polish this maybe every sort of year maybe for this depending on how much use it gets um if it gets little use in a couple of years if you want to wax polish it just once more if you think i want a bit more polish on it just wait uh a week or so before you put another wax straight on top of this you want to build it up but then leave it for you know for as long as you like but don't continually apply wax polishes um day after day it would just melt into what you've got here and end up being a big sort of sticky mess so let those waxes dry before applying any more wax polish to it on and for maintenance wax weights of six months year maybe longer depending on how much use you have but anyhow thank you for watching please subscribe to our youtube channel hit the subscribe button hit the notification bell as well you'll be notified when we upload new videos which we hope to on a regular basis

Channel: Gilboys

Views: 8,550

Rating: 4.9259257 out of 5

Keywords: furniture stripping, furniture restoration, G-Plan, GPlan, G Plan, strip and refinish, wood stripper, wood finishing, refinishing, how to

Id: IpDg9S8tJeA

Length: 47min 19sec (2839 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 29 2020