Bleaching Your Furniture – How To Get A New Look At No Cost To You

Not a month ago, I mentioned to my husband that I thought our dining room was officially complete. We loved everything from the decor to the feature wall, to the rug.

We even loved the table. But there was one problem. It didn’t match our style.

Don’t get me wrong, we loved the table itself, but about three years ago now, we stained it a dark espresso color.

That was more our vibe back then, but now, we love all things light, bright, and natural.

So as I was staring at the room about a week ago, I realized that there was something that needed to be done.

We needed to refinish the table.

I wasn’t sure if I wanted to stain it, paint it, or bleach it. But one thing was for sure. It needed to change.

So I grabbed my new cordless HART Tools Orbit Sander and got to work.

BLEACHING YOUR FURNITURE – HOW TO GET A NEW LOOK AT NO COST TO YOU

My first step was to get the table out in the garage, aka my new workshop thanks to my husband and HART Tools for outfitting me with all kinds of fun power tools!

START SANDING

So I grabbed my cordless sander, got out in the sunshine (because I could), and got to work!

This table was dark, so it took quite a bit of elbow grease to get it stripped back down to its natural wood.

But once it was sanded, it was so worth it! The lighter, brighter wood was speaking to me!

But it was still feeling a little warm and had some dark spots on it. So I needed to take it a step further.

Luckily, we had bleach on hand, so this next step was simple!

FURNITURE BLEACHING

I grabbed some bleach, a bucket, and some gloves. I diluted my bleach with water, grabbed a staining pad, and began applying my bleaching solution to the table, going with the grain of the wood.

I allowed my bleaching solution to get to work! If you can, pull your table out into the sunshine and let the sun help it out!

Once it’s dry, spot treat any darker spots and let them bleach.

Then, go over your entire table once more with your bleaching solution to make sure it’s all uniform!

You can repeat bleach coats until you’re satisfied with the results!

STAIN OR SEAL YOUR PIECE

Once it looks like you want it to look, you can either choose to stain your table, or you can simply seal it and call it a day!

I’m loving the raw wood look, so I opted not to stain my table.

And actually, at this time right now, I haven’t sealed it yet because I don’t have the exact wax I need!

But any hardwood wax or poly will do — just make sure to test it on a small piece of your table first to make sure it doesn’t change the color or look of your piece too much!

And that’s it!

A whole lot of elbow grease, but no real cost and SO worth it to have a brand new look!

Have you tried furniture bleaching? Let me know in the comments!