IKEA Wardrobe

[Dodie]

About a year ago, I bought a wardrobe from IKEA. It's quite a light coloured wood (I imagine it's chipboard covered with some sort of pine finish - does that sound right?)

Anyway, the missus has decided that she wants darker furniture in the bedroom now, so changes need to be made. This wardrobe does it's job pretty well so we want to keep it in that room if we can. So, background story now told, is there anyway that we can sand or rough up the surfaces enough to be able to slap on a dark varnish? If, as is possible, the end result would look totally crap - could we instead paint over it with a special type of paint?

Any advice greatfully received - (The simpler the better!)

 

[Third_Eye]

All depends on the condition of wood and what is originally coated with (if any). What you need to watch out for is if the wood has been coated with an Laquer Coating cos if so then NO varnish will adhere. Also if its been waxed, again then NO varnish will adhere. Therefore try and find out what its coated with (if any) and reply. I am sure IKEA would still have your product and you could check to see if its coated or not and whether its real wood or chipboard covered with some sort of pine finish !

 

[Scrit]

All depends on the condition of wood and what is originally coated with (if any). What you need to watch out for is if the wood has been coated with an Laquer Coating cos if so then NO varnish will adhere. Also if its been waxed, again then NO varnish will adhere. Therefore try and find out what its coated with (if any) and reply. I am sure IKEA would still have your product and you could check to see if its coated or not and whether its real wood or chipboard covered with some sort of pine finish !

Ikea use vinyl-wrapped MDF, melamine faced chipboard, veneered MDF and and solid pine for their furniture..... As TE said if it's solid wood you'll need to strip off the finish - wax can be removed using Liberon (V99) Wax Remover, whilst a precatalysed lacquer the other alternative finish will need to be sanded off unless you have a local pine stripper who is willing to handle this type of finish (it requires a special stripper, not the normal lye/caustic tank mix). Veneered MDF cand be sanded carefully, but the veneer is very thin and this process reqyuires extreme cara. Once sanded they can be refinished like solid wood. As to vinyl-wrapped or melamine faced materials the only thing you can do with them is paint them as they'll never take any form of stain - the sheds do kitchen door paint for that sort of thing. I'd suggest that you try to avoid staining then clear lacquering, rather seal the grain and finish using a coloured lacquer, that wy the results will be less likely to be patchy. The only real problem I can see is that pine always looks like pine, no matter what colour you stain it. That grain pattern is impossible to hide.

Scrit

 

[Dodie]

TE, Scrit - Thanks very much!

I'll do some research on the finish.

Cheers!