Forum Archive

We have a house that is being renovated and we are debating what to do with the woodwork. It has old shellac on it and some, but not much crazing (that spidery cracking), and is a bit blotchy in spots, dark, and dull. We like the dullness but aren’t crazy about the blotchiness and the cracking. So we cleaned it off very, very well with denatured alcohol and dawn detergent. This didn’t change things too much. Then we sanded it with very fine sandpaper in a test area, and it cleaned it up a bit, but took off too much of the original finish. Then we did a test run with a coat of shellac on both the sanded and not sanded sections. And still it doesn’t look much different. The sanded section is too light and the other section just looks the same, but cleaner and shinier.

So the question is what next? Should we use a colored shellac? How many coats should we think about doing? Should we take off the old finish? This seems like it might be a waste of time because all the stuff we’ve read says that old shellac just literally melts in to the new shellac when you put it on. And we are just plain confused. Any idea where we go from here? Any idea where to get shellac that is colored in b’stone Brooklyn? Any idea whether you really can rub wax in to the finished surface of the shellac with steel wool and can tone down the crazy bright shine of the shellac finish? Thanks in advance for any information you can provide. Happy New Year!