Cleaning Reclaimed Barn Wood

I love how pretty reclaimed wood is.

Cleaning reclaimed barn wood.

The last step to clean and refinish your reclaimed wood is to properly seal the wood. Picture frames and furniture can be constructed out of reclaimed barn wood and this is a good way to reuse old wood at the same time. Make sure not to use too much. And unfortunately i learned this the hard way.

Barn wood can add weathered rustic charm to your home. Next once the wood was dry i took it to the planer this cut the sanding process. However due to the age of many barn wood planks a thorough cleaning is required to make them safe to use in projects or in your home. I washed down the old barn wood first then using the water hoes brush and adding 1 part bleach and 2 part water in the attached container i went to work.

Within minutes the wood was looking much cleaner and i had lots of fun scrubbing that old nasty barn wood. The most important lesson i ve learned with reclaimed wood is when to lightly clean it vs. Give it a scrub or sand down. This tutorial shows you how to do it.

Before i could turn the barn door into a table top i needed to clean the wood up. If you re planning to use it in a project the first step of that project will be to clean the old wood assuming of course that you re like me and you want to install clean reclaimed wood into your home. I used minwax polycrylic water based protective finish in clear satin you guys this stuff is amazing. It s a fact that reclaimed wood is usually dirty.

Years ago when i started cleaning reclaimed wood i would sand it down with a hand sander which would get rid of that beautiful patina and some of the character. Then the idea was born to use this as the top of my craft room work table.