Golden Oak Wine Barrel Furniture Refinishing

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Hey everyone, Tim Gilliam with Teak Master here, and we are at our shop, and we’re about to get started on refinishing some Oak wine barrel furniture. Now, this furniture was made of reclaimed Oak wine barrels, and as you can see, it has been blessed—or maybe cursed—by the blow and go finishing pro, uh, who seems to have coated this with some sort of orangey, um, I don’t know, varnish or urethane or something. It looks like crap. It’s blistering and peeling, and obviously, our customer contracted us to fix the blow and go finishing pro’s job.

So, we’re going to go ahead and show you the steps on what it takes to restore this back to new. Take a look at how weathered and disgusting it looks. Actually, it’s really cool. I love the beautiful shape, but it looks terrible. You’ve got some oxidation, it’s uh, split, you know, where the grain expands and contracts. This is the inside of the barrel here, which is usually pretty discolored. And it’s a beautiful chair, it just looks like crap. Okay guys, so the first step is reapplying the, uh, the stripping agent, the remover if you will, and we just, you know, brush that on. It’s a paste, and, um, it will bubble and sort of dissolve this varnish or peeling finish that’s on here. Okay guys, so I set a chair outside here in the sun, and, um, this is really cool because you get a better view of what the remover does. It’s actually, on its own, bubbling and dissolving the coating. You don’t want to do this in direct sunlight when it’s really hot. You want a lot of aeration, which we have here. Don’t do it inside, at least I wouldn’t recommend it. This is, you know, not the nicest stuff to be handling, but, um, you know, it’s definitely needed to get this coating off. So, take a look at that. So this is all done by hand—lots of hand work, scraping it, getting off the coating. We’ll just systematically do everything. So it’s a decent-sized chair. You’ve got in between the slats, the top, the bottom—everything that needs to be stripped. And it’s just slow, tedious, calculated work. So we just, you know, really want to get the word out on what’s really entailed to do this type of stuff because it takes a while, but it’s definitely worth it. This is a beautiful chair, I’m sure it was really expensive. And some of these things are heirloom pieces, so, you know, people want to protect them, and they want them to stick around for a long time. Got the other arm, and, uh, one thing I wanted to point out is all of the waste—the varnish that we’re taking off, along with the remover—everything scooped up at the end and taken to a recycling facility where we take all of the old stains and finishes and rags and everything that we use. Um, it’s pretty expensive, but, you know, you gotta do it. Alright guys, so here you have it, a fully stripped barrel chair. And as you can see, some of the areas, when you get really close up, haven’t been fully stripped. These areas here, you can still see, are shiny, but for the most part, it looks pretty darn good. The lighting is not the greatest thing here, but you get the point. Now, again, sanding is needed, okay? We still have remnants of the previous coating—you can see it here. This stuff’s really difficult to get off. So, again, we’re going to bring up the disgusting evildoing blow and go finishing pro. First of all, they might strip it, but they’d probably just lightly sand it and put some oil on it and call it a day, you know, because they don’t know how to do this stuff. You know, they just don’t, or they don’t want to. They don’t want to put in the hard work on what it takes to restore this expensive and beautiful furniture back to its original condition. So, stripping—this is how it looks. Let’s take a look at the back. It’s really nice and ready for sanding. There’s the manufacturer—it’s really cool, and we got a lot of it off. It just, this takes a lot of time and a lot of effort, and a lot of—you can’t go fast when you’re doing this type of stuff. So now it’s ready for the sanding, and we’ll go ahead and show you that. Alright, here we have it, the collection of wine barrel furniture. We’ve got the side tables here, and these are really cool. Look at the markings here, different markings right here, McRan and whatever, 2013. And, um, these are really cool chairs. Uh, the lighting here, again, is pretty, um, hectic, but, you know, what can you do? So, this is the inside of the wine barrel, and you could see that it’s still red. So, these have been out in the sun, they’ve been sanded, they’ve been, you know, worked on, and they’re still red. So, I mean, that’s just the attribute of the wood. Here’s the outside of the oak barrels. It’s clean, rid of the peeling varnish from the blow and go finishing pro, that sick, disgusting evildoer. Oh, you know what? I wanted to point out some sick and disgusting evildoing from the blow and go finishing pro. There’s varnish from the last time they did some work. So we’ll try to get that off. Maybe it’ll come off, we’ll see. But take a look at everything. It looks absolutely stunning. Beautiful, refinished, stripped, ready to go. Let’s take a look at the back. Really, really nice stuff here. Stripped them, sanded them, cleaned them. They look really, really nice. Let’s point out some more attributes. So, this is the inside of the barrel, and then compare it to this one over here, which is really smooth and not as, sort of, cracked and charred and stuff. But hey, you know what? This is reclaimed wood, so what are you going to do? No one wants it perfect, but they want their investment protected. Alright guys, so the next step is applying the stain, and we chose to use Golden Oak. Now, I know what you’re thinking—this looks extremely yellow, almost like paint, but I assure you it’s not going to be paint-like, and it’s not going to be super yellow. I want to point out, also, that we’re using an oil-based penetrating stain, just like it said on the marker a few minutes ago. Oil-based penetrating stains are great because they actually go into the wood and seal it up from within. They’re the original coatings, you know. This is not just some cheap Home Depot water-based coating. I mean, I’m sure you could get away with a water-based stain, but oil-based stains are available, so why not? Why not just go with the original? Why not go with the best? Since we’re applying an oil-based top coat, you know, it only makes sense. So, we work everything in with the brush, make sure that we get in between the slats, make sure that it really penetrates in, and we’ll do the whole chair. And once we’re done with that, it’ll penetrate to its full potential. Then, we wipe off the excess. So, as you can see, wiping it thoroughly removes any excess that the wood didn’t accept. And as you can see right there, it’s not super yellow. It’s come back to beautiful Golden Oak. There’s a tinge of maybe a little bit of red, pinkish color in there, and I just think that is an attribute of these Oak wine barrels. But, um, the color’s come right back. It’s added a really, really great color, and once you get the top coat on there, it’s going to look beautiful. So we spray on three layers of a very high-end clear coat that dries satin. So, on this particular project, the homeowner wanted a little bit of sheen. Sometimes it goes back and forth. Most people want matte, but some people want satin, or they go back and forth. So, you know, wine barrels are traditionally probably kind of flat, but when they do this furniture, a lot of people use, you know, a little bit of sheen. So, I think that’s just the kind of traditional look. So, just want to spray it on so we get a nice thick, even coating. We get into everything—in between the slats, the top, the bottom. And spraying is just a step above—I couldn’t even imagine trying to be a disgusting blow and go finishing pro and try to do this with a brush. It just wouldn’t work. Alright, so now it’s showtime. We’ve got the delivery, bringing out the client’s valuable stuff. Everything’s white glove delivery, fully wrapped, very carefully done, put in place. Look at that color—just beautiful Golden Oak. That’s the inside of the barrel. That’s the best we could get it. Nobody wants this to look like it’s brand new furniture. It’s reclaimed wood, but it looks absolutely stunning. Just complement that beautiful seating area, right in front of that fireplace, ready to have some drinks or enjoy some food or some good conversation. I’d love to sit in that. I mean, the customer’s super happy, we’re happy with the way it’s done. Thank you guys so much for tuning in. If you like what you saw, go ahead and click that like button. Go ahead and follow us, because we’re coming out with more videos just like this of exterior wood refinishing. Take a look at tias.com—it’s our website, it’s full of a wealth of information on wood services just like this. If you guys have any comments or any questions, or even if you have a better way to do this stuff, we’re welcome to hear your knowledge. Leave them in the comment section. We’ll be sure to get back to you as soon as we possibly can. Thank you guys so much for tuning in. We appreciate you so much. Tim Gilliam with Teak Master, signing out. Peace.

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