White stain/paint over "tung oil"

[thrugoodmarshall]

Years ago, I bought some yellow pine furniture. This is the stuff that was being sold in malls in the late '80's and early '90's. Brands like "The Box Store" or "This End Up".

Anyhow, it's made of untreated yellow pine, and they sell you a can of something they say is tung oil to rub on it. This is supposed to seal the surface and protect the wood.

Well, I rubbed lots of this stuff on the furniture.

My wife does NOT like the appearance of this furniture!

She wants to stain it with a white wash stain, or barring that, just paint it white.

Is there a way to strip that wood of its oil coat? Or must I just sand off the top layer of wood to get rid of the oil? Is it possible to stain a light (white) color over that oil treated wood? Is there a type of paint that will stick to that type of surface?

I'm thinking the practical thing to do would be to paint it all white, but I'm not sure what type of paint is appropriate.

Thanks very much to anybody who cares to share their experience; I'm very new at this.

[bridger]

ah yes. the unfinished furniture bit.

a point in her favor....

a good scrub down with paint thinner and a few days to dry should take care of whatever uncured oils are on the surface.

an oil based semi-transparent gel stain should do what you want.

more to the point, there are several types of *primers* that will stick once you clean it. then you can use pretty much any paint you want.

for furniture you'll want a pretty hard, durable paint. home depot and lowes aren't going to carry what you want. look in your yellow pages for industrial paint suppliers near you. ask the sales people there for the right thing.

there are oil/alkyd paints that will do what you want, as well as epoxy/latex, acrylic enamel and polyurethane paints. heck, it's been a couple of years since I looked into it. by now there may be several new classes of coatings technologies I have never heard of...

we're ALL very new at this. just some of have been new at this longer than others....

[George]

Doubt that thinner will do much to cured tung oil. Skip it and chose yourself some pigmented oil-based primer if you're going to paint it, though it might respond well enough to an oil stain to satisfy SWMBO.

Surely there is an out-of-the-way spot where you can try it out both options.

[bridger]

assuming the stuff supplied is in fact tung oil. it may turn out to be mineral oil or some such.

[Preston Andreas]

If you have enough tung oil on the furniture that has cured, it may have sealed the wood enough that stain won't take. Try some on a concealed area. If the stain doesn't absorb, you either have to sand away the surface, spray a toner with the color you want or paint it.

[patriarch]

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Or Zinnser BIN Shellac-based primer. I would think the wash down would be primarily to get to an acceptably clean surface, more than to remove any oil. And the shellac would seal in anything that was put there from the original slatherings...

[George]

How many kinds of finish (with different expansion rates) do you really want on this puppy?

Oil already, follow with oil. Clean is a brush, solvent only if there's free oil, otherwise expensive and unneeded.

"patriarch [e-mail]" [e-mail] wrote in