Buying unfinished furniture allows you to decide the exact shade of finish that your furniture will have. This way you can have perfectly matching or complementing furniture in your home, which will give your home décor a polished and put together look. You can stain your new unfinished furniture to match your current furniture, or even strip and refinish your old furniture along with finishing your new unfinished furniture for an entirely new look.
Another advantage to getting unfinished furniture is that it’s often less expensive. You save the cost of paying for the labor required to finish the piece. Also, you often get better quality furniture since it’s easier to see the flaws in unfinished furniture and avoid the pieces with flaws.
You can select your unfinished furniture from whatever quality hardwood or softwood you prefer. Most unfinished furniture companies offer selections in oak, pine, maple, aspen, cherry, walnut, and alder, to name a few, and the types of unfinished furniture that are available in these woods are equally diverse.
There are two steps to finishing your furniture; staining, and finishing. Staining is where you give your unfinished furniture color. You can put as many coats of stain on as you like. More coats will give the furniture a richer color. The final coat is the finish, which is usually oil-based rather than water-based like the stain often is. You put this on to seal and protect the wood and its stain.
There are several types of finishes you can choose to apply to unfinished furniture. A “clean” finish will allow the natural pattern of the wood to show through the finish, giving furniture a more rustic look. A tinted or opaque finish will make the wood appear all the same color, and can even change the original color of the wood if you desire. If you want the wood to be colored rather than maintaining the wood look, you can opt for a painted finish. If you want a painted finish it is especially important to make sure that there are as few flaws as possible in the unfinished furniture since painted finishes tend to point out any existing flaws.
Now for the actual process of finishing your unfinished furniture. There are a couple of items you will find handy to have. Get a pair of gardening gloves to protect your hands, and use either a hand sander or an electric finishing sander. You will be able to tell where the unfinished furniture needs to be sanded by putting on the gloves and running your hand along the surface of the unfinished furniture. Wherever it needs more sanding, the glove will drag. Always sand with the grain rather than across the grain. After sanding to make sure the surface is even, clean any dust from the surface very carefully. Do not use water to do this, use a dry cloth. Then you are ready to start staining the wood. Don’t seal the piece of unfinished furniture before you stain it, wait until after.
Sanding, staining, and finishing a piece of unfinished furniture isn’t a complicated task, and it’s one that will not only save you a little money, it will also get you more precisely what you want in a furniture finish, and it will enable you to coordinate the colors of your furniture according to your preferences, not the furniture manufacturer.
By Riannon Cutler