Wax On, Wax Off, Or Something Like That

Recently the Venn Diagram of Life had enough overlap that I was able to address the problem of the blanched finish on the sill/shelf of the new bay window in the dining room.  As you may recall, I trimmed out the window with antique cherry I had in my stash, and sealed the shelf with epoxy because there was a 100% chance that Mrs. Barn would be using it to hold plants.  In order to unify the overall appearance of the window and shelf, I glazed the veneered pine shelf with an oil stain to match the cherry.

It looked grand until I varnished over the glazing with P&L 38 that then blushed overnight as it dried.  I mean, the kind of blushing when we were spraying cellulose nitrate on a muggy July day in South Florida.

A reader wrote to tell me that an amine component of the epoxy hardener was the culprit.  Despite several efforts to mitigate the whitened surface it remained in place, leading me to the inescapable conclusion that the oil varnish and the oil glaze underneath it had to come off.

The time for that to occur had finally arrived and the combination of a low-odor stripper with the open windows inflicted minimal affect inside the house.  A very small test area worked well, a larger test area confirmed my path of execution.

My method was to brush on some low odor paint remover, cover that with aluminum foil, and let it work its magic for about three hours.

At the end of that time the foil was peeled back and the now-dissolve varnish and stain scraped/wiped off slicker’n cat snot.

My original plan was to introduce a colorant into a new application of the varnish to achieve the same cherry tone, but the fact is we like the contrast so much I am going to leave it looking just the way it is.  I’ll rub out the epoxy finish and call it “done.”