Remind Me Never To Do This Type of Furniture Makeover Again!

ByDiane Henkler 03/21/202503/21/2025

You know me, I enjoy making over just about anything, especially furniture to fit my decorating vision when decorating a room in my home.

I also like giving furniture new purposes. I have many pieces where I changed the finish with decorative paint techniques and trim. And when needed, I have created new uses or functions for the pieces of furniture to use in different rooms.

How to make a craft room table from old sideboard cabinets and a hollow core door.

50% of the furniture I own are hand-me-downs. AKA… free.

If I like the shape and size of a piece I know I can add my own style to it to fit my needs. 16 years ago I did just this using two identical base cabinets to create the base of my studioffice work table.

I painted the cabinets, added a top and baseboard trim along the bottom to create a worktable.

Craft room with Hunter Hepburn ceiling fan with lampshade to replace broken glass globe.

When we moved, the worktable became part of my new studioffice. The worktable has served me well, until I no longer needed it when we changed the room recently to a multi-purpose room.

White painted sideboard in a bed room after it was swapped from another room in the house.

After making that room change, I decided to move one of the cabinets to the guest room. The one where the tree from the yard came crashing through during hurricane Helene. The cabinet will now become a dresser of sorts to hold a table lamp and a place for guests to put their things.

side view of a Christeli Charleston 14.5 mattress and base in an Eastman upholstered platform bed in a bedroom.

I thought the cabinet would look nice in the room to coordinate with it’s top. See the glass fronted cabinet along the wall in the photo above? It was made to go on top of the cabinet.

I stripped the finish years ago and added feet to it to make it a standalone piece of furniture. I haven’t used the two pieces together or in the same room in 30 years.

a bottle of citrastrip and a brush on top of a sideboard that has Citrastrip on it to start the paint removing process.

This past week I started to strip the paint off the base so it would have the same finish as the top. I thought it would take a day or two and I would have the makeover done and posted earlier this week. That didn’t happen.

I have never been a fan of stripping the finish off of furniture, but do like the natural wood look that can be had when you take the time and effort to do it.

Well… I WILL NEVER ATTEMPT TO STRIP another piece of furniture… EVER!!!

paint stripping a piece of wood furniture

Stripping a painted or stained piece of furniture is the messiest, smelliest and most toxic furniture makeover to take on… even when using a non-toxic stripper like Citrastrip. Plus, you never know how the wood is going to look underneath once stripped.

how to strip the finish off of wood furniture.

When I stripped the glass cabinet top to use in my kitchen in my previous home, the finish came out amazing. You can see it in the above photo where it is sitting on another sideboard, a larger one that was also a hand-me-down piece of furniture that became a bathroom sink vanity in my current home.

I thought if I stripped the base cabinet it would look just like the top that is now in the guest room since the pieces were made to go together to create a narrow style china cabinet.

The stripping process was a TOTAL FAIL!!!!

I put stripper on, let it stand following the directions on the label and removed it 3 times. It was a lengthy process and still there are just too many dark spots where the stained finish won’t budge.

side of stripped piece of wood furniture

I have use Mineral Spirits an sanded and still the finish doesn’t look the way I wanted. Sanding the surface just made the lighter areas, lighter and didn’t remove the dark areas at all.

Wood front of drawer stripped of paint using Citrastrip and a plastic film.

Only the drawer front came out the way I envisioned.

view of wood cabinet after paint stripping.

And… to make matters worse, I had forgotten that I added the baseboard trim around the bottom of the cabinet when I first made the cabinets part of the worktable years ago. UGH!!!!

The white baseboard molding is not even wood, but painted MDF board that even when stripped is still white and won’t be the same as the rest of the cabinet. I felt pretty darn dumb when I didn’t realize this before I started the stripping process. If I had remembered I never would have started this project.

The baseboard molding was attached using lots of Liquid Nails. It would be very hard to remove it without damaging the cabinet.

looking at the front of a just paint stripped piece of furniture

On a positive note, all is not lost. Paint and some creativity will fix it. :-)

A painful lesson learned. Now at least I know that stripping the finish from furniture is something I will never ever do again. It was messy, time consuming, toxic and didn’t turn out as I expected. I should have left well enough alone.

Over the weekend I plan to clean the surface and paint the cabinet again using one of the many decorative painting techniques like I did on my garage door you can find in my Furniture Makeovers section.

I may end up leaving the drawer natural so it will coordinate with the cabinet top in the room.

I will share the finished cabinet makeover with you next week.

Have you ever stripped furniture or had a project not turn out the way you wanted? If so, how did you fix it?

Furniture Makeovers That You May Like

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22 Comments

Michele M. says:

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Well I am just catching up to my weekend reading posts to catch this one.
I was at my sister’s lake house doing lots of cleaning to get it ready for another season of spring and summer awesomeness. D, am I the only one who thinks it looks pretty cool like that? I am disappointed for you to not have the stain come off like it did on the matching other piece – but it honestly looks pretty cool to me. I like it. But I understand, too.

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Virginia says:

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I had that problem with a old desk years ago and finally bleached the top .I put it in the sun ,a old cloth with hot water and bleach ,laid it on the top and let the sun bleach it ,it did take a few days but it worked .

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1. Diane Henkler says:
  
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  Hi Virginia – Putting the cabinet out on the upper deck of my house in the sun is what I did yesterday. It was a bright and sunny day and I am amazed already at how much the piece has evenly lightened up. There is still one area on the top that is dark, I will try your suggestion of putting bleach on it and see what happens. Thanks
  
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Karen says:

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I feel your pain! Years ago, and after several positive “stripping” experiences, I learned a painful lesson. If the furniture you want to strip has a factory paint job, BEWARE! Many furniture factories use several kinds of wood (like scrap pieces) if they plan to have a painted finish. I stripped white paint off of a standard size canopy bed only to find there were 4 distinctly different kinds of wood color and grain! All the chemicals, sandpaper, and elbow grease was all for naught, as there was no way to stain it to look decent! What a mess!

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Sue Bauman says:

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Have you tried oxalic acid to lighten the dark spots? Please give that idea some research, especially a content creator on Youtube by the name of Thomas Johnson, he’s out of Gorham, Maine. He uses oxalic acid with outstanding results. I have faith that you will triumph!

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Sally says:

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Just one of the reasons I love your blog is that you don’t sugarcoat a mistake and yes we all make them along the way. You are the real deal and I learn so much and love all that you do…thank you

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Stephanie Atherton says:

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Hi Diane, as a long time fan, I just wanted to thank you for your fantastic blog, including this most recent example of your authenticity, transparency, and just down to earth wonderfulness! I have learned so much from you over the years…
Never had the gumption to strip a piece of furniture myself, but have tried many of your other projects successfully. You are a breath of fresh air! Thanks again and all the best, Stephanie Atherton

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Donna says:

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What a headache for you. But…knowing you, you will make it look fantastic! Anxious to see the reveal. Enjoy your weekend! ;)

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barbara says:

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I agree!! I hate Citristrip! It ate through every pair of gloves I tried and left my hands chapped and dried up. It did NOT remove the finish on my grandmothers waterfall oak table.. it made a mess. YEARS ago the chemicals worked… I think all of the environmental regulations impacted them. I am not lacking experience. I grew up with a mom who made over furniture and I even did a upright piano 30+ years ago..(.ended up ” antiquing” it as I could not get the black out of the ugly grain).

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1. Diane Henkler says:
  
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  Hi Barbara – I had a similar problem with the Citrastrip and low odor mineral spirits eating through my gloves. I double-gloved for it to stop happening, but the damage to the tips of my fingers was made and they are now dry and peeling. Lots of hand cream is getting them back to normal. I used the CitraStrip since it is less toxic. Years ago I used a regular stripper on a piece and it literally left burns on my hands with gloves on. The smell was also too intense with the heavy duty strippers – an outside job only.
  
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Deanna says:

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Oh my! What a labor of love and frustration! Will look forward to Part 2 to see how it turns out. Knowing you and your fine attention to detail, I bet it will be stunning. Maybe not what you had in mind originally, but something creative you will love just as much.

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Debra Wallace says:

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Yes, I know you’re serious when you say you will never EVER attempt to strip furniture again (as opposed to just never :)

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Paula says:

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Diane I feel for you. For years I too stripped and refinished furniture and was happy with the finished project. But a year or two ago I decided to strip an old white painted coffee table and I used Citristrip and hardly any of the old white paint would budge despite my trying at least three times.

I think now I recall that a certain chemical was missing from this new Citristrip (another cancer causing chemical?)and that’s why it wasn’t working. I finally decided to put it out on the curb to be picked up (and it was) and become someone else’s problem.

BTW, was the wood on the bottom cabinet the same as the wood on the top cabinet? There’s no way to know if they are both painted and soft woods, e.g. like pine, stain differently (not so good) than hard woods.
Been there done that.

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Lisa Smith says:

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I understand the frustration of this very well. I once stripped the paint off of a wooden dresser that was in my home when I was a child. I wanted to have it be the natural wood, stained to match the crib I had for my son. The process was messy and toxic as you described. But also the type of wood, for the structure of the dresser was completely different than the drawer faces. I could never get the paint to fully come off the sides and base of the dresser.
SO I sanded it all down and only stained the top of the dresser and the drawer faces. I painted the rest bright white and used white ceramic knobs on the drawers to help tie it together. I recovered the wood rocking chair cushions in white and the bumper of the crib was also white. Those things helped me feel like it all fit together and I ended up liking it a lot. That was in between babies #1 and # 2…. now it is being used by son #4! A few years after that original dresser project, I was able to get another wood dresser and refinished it in the same way in purpose so they matched!

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Karen says:

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I dislike that job even more than you🤔

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1. Diane Henkler says:
  
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  Stripping furniture is no fun that is for sure! Messy and time consuming.
  
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Terri says:

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Hi – I’ve had similar experiences, but maybe some of these ideas could work if you want to try to preserve the wood look –
– try bleaching the wood (Zinsser has a 2-step product that works really well)
– try Dixie Belle Voodoo stains, I’ve used the white and grey colors, they give a stain washed look, and I’m excited to try some of the 4 new wood colored stains
Good luck with whichever you decide whether it’s painting or staining etc

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1. Diane Henkler says:
  
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  Hi Terri – Thank you for your great suggestions. I think after washing down the cabinet, I will place it outside in the sun and see what happens. I may also try a faux wood grain finish like I did on my garage door for the base, but in a color to match the drawer. I hope you have a great weekend.
  
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Susan says:

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Hi Diane,
Thank you for sharing a project that actually didn’t go well, so we may learn from it. I do want to mention that other stripping projects I’ve seen, have had to bleach the wood after stripping, to get dark spots out and get a nice even light color. Also, did you consider removing the MDF base? It looks like a shorter height would be just fine in a bedroom. And I’m not sure you’d miss that extra base. Maybe even add feet like you did to the cabinet?

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1. Diane Henkler says:
  
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  Hi Susan – Thanks for sharing your ideas. I can’t remove the base as I installed it with way too much liquid nails. Trying to remove it would be hard and then I would have to sand it. Sanding it hard would take the finish down to the bare wood which is much lighter than the finish I am trying to match. I don’t want to spend anymore time on the piece where I don’t know how it will turn out. Using bleach would be to smelly again and I don’t think my nose can take anymore. :-) Painting techniques are my jam so that is what I am going to go for – maybe trying to paint a faux wood grain.
  
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PJ Hall says:

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I started stripping the painted window frames in our upstairs bedroom assuming the wood underneath was oak, like downstairs. Tedious hours/days/maybe weeks? later, using both stripper and a heat gun, discovered fir. Not pretty
Had I but known … would have just sanded and repainted.

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1. Diane Henkler says:
  
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  Hi PJ – I feel your pain after putting in all that work. :-(
  
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