Sun rooms, patios, kitchens and sometimes even the more formal living areas are often graced by the beautiful lines of wicker and rattan furniture. Especially for those items used out doors, or where the sun exposure is greater, refinishing is a periodic necessity. Refinishing these items is not easy. Removing the old finish is the first challenge. The innumerable rounded shapes and overlapping strands make removing paints and finishes particularly difficult. What makes stripping wicker even more dicey is that many wicker items have been made with imitation wicker–a heavy twisted paper wrapped tightly around a fine wire. The paper will be destroyed in stripping, the imitation wicker will mush up and look like a paper-mache project. Once the stripping is successfully accomplished, almost invariably there will be repairs to do, the windings on rattan furniture in particular will typically need to be replaced. When it is time to apply the new finish, the difficulties of stripping are revisited, how to evenly apply the new paint or finish to a surface that has so many angles?
Rather than stressing about any of those difficult issues, we suggest you let us help you with them. Bring your wicker and rattan items to us! As we illustrate on this page, we are not intimidated by any of the obstacles involved in refinishing wicker and rattan furniture and instead are pretty good at it.
The beautiful rocker you see to the right is actually the before picture. Because we didn't take detail photos, you can't see the areas where the wicker is broken and in need of repair. In addition, the seat is a tacked on cover over a broken cane seat. The customer also wanted a new look for both pieces. Below right we show the rocker after stripping, after the old seating parts were removed and after some repairs. The bench as it came to us is at the bottom of the right column. Below you can see the next two steps.
The first thing to point out is the close woven cane seat applied to the rocker matches the original on the bench
The two pieces were then painted as you can see in the upper two photos. The customer wanted an older look so our next step was to apply a van dyke brown tone coat over everything. The final step was to apply an even satiny topcoat to protect the colors and add depth to the finish.
Not a look all will like but the effect is just what she wanted and does give an antique appearance to two newly refinished pieces.
Sun and rain, temperatures high and low, will eventually get the better of even the best clear exterior finishes. It isn't hard to tell when a finish has lost that war. It begins to peel and chip off, the surface underneath begins to look weathered and gray, splits in the wood or rattan surface begin to appear. As you can see from the photo set below, even when the weathering has become fairly extreme, the furniture is not ruined, but can still be refinished successfully.
Just below, we show the set as it came to us, the table after it was stripped, and the set after refinishing.
The photos below should be self explanatory. They are all the same objects in the condition they were in when they arrived and when they left. Why suffer with the before when we can help you obtain the after? The creamy gold color is one we created just for rattan.
This customer decided it was time for a lighter more natural look in their living room. That meant dealing with the year round halloween look of their wicker chairs. To obtain a natural look meant first of all the removal of all the old black paint. It should be easy enough to see that we were successful at that part of the job. We then applied a natural satin finish. A local upholsterer attached the new seating. Quite a transformation!
From natural to flamboyant! We will help our customers achieve whatever look they wish to see in their home or on their patio.
You will not be able to get a paint that yields this look from any store. This is only achievable with a technique we use to give this rich translucence. We don't think you can achieve this at home even if we told you what we do unless you have a professional set up to work with and some experience using it. So, don't waste your time or money trying this yourself. We can get it done for you the first time.
Another example of a very difficult set to work with. Imagine evenly removing the old finish from the table. Very challenging, but we are set up to do that.
The finish was interesting. We were able to achieve for them a finish that can look very dark, almost black, and yet a fairly bright and red color when viewed from certain angles. We took numerous photos to try to capture that feature. This one came the closest although it shows too much red!The effect in natural light was more subtle.
Creating unique looks for customers is something we really enjoy doing. Perhaps you can tell from the variety you see on this page.
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