How can I darken/stain furniture that already has a polyurethane finish?

Posted by admin on March 31st, 2012

I have several large pieces of furniture that is finished with a clear polyurethane. My ex applied the finish about 10 years ago and I would now like to darken it to an espresso color.

The pieces are solid pine from Mexico. they are rustic styled, but I went to the furniture store and saw that they had similar pieces but in an espresso stain that still showed the wood grain. they also had a see thru color, like red and green on some of the sides and front (as if they were originally that color and it didn't come completely off when it was refinished).

I have a bar, china cabinet, book shelf, coffee table, dining table and chairs that I'd like to redo. as you can tell I have a lot of furniture that I need to redo. So the less work I have to do the better.

Can this be done without having to strip the furniture?

Please help! Amateur at work here.

Thanks!

You have to strip off the polyurethane, and it's not easy to remove. Once it's removed you may have trouble getting pine to take the stain. if they look nice I'd leave them like they are until you can trade them for darker furniture.

You can't make stain penetrate the polyurethane so your only option, unless you want to just paint it, is to strip the finish

Unfortuantely have some bad news. the stain and finish require you to strip the clear polyurethane. Otherwise the bonding will not take.