Jarrah Wood Furniture Refinishing

Okay, so now this furniture is actually a previous client of ours’ furniture that reached out after about six years. He had not maintained it even though we did send reminders and contacted like we always do when it’s time for maintenance, which is annually for this particular area. Now since he didn’t maintain it, what happens is it starts to weather and gray over time, and that’s because the natural oils oxidize, and they turn gray, and then dust and dirt and nature’s contaminants land on it.

Okay, so even though it’s been about five years since we maintained this furniture, you can see some of the actual reddish brown natural color of the Jarrah wood right here on this vertical support of the swing. Now if you come on over here and you take a look at the arm of this loveseat or the top of the table, you’ll see that it’s oxidized. So a good thing to know is that vertical surfaces weather at a different rate than horizontal surfaces because the horizontal surfaces absorb all the UV and everything that lands on it — sun, UV, and nature’s contaminants.

Jarrah furniture was made by a company called Jensen Jarrah out of Australia. They were the probably only company, at least that I know of, that made furniture out of this beautiful wood. Now they’re no longer in business and it’s been about 10 years since they’ve been in business, but it just goes to show you how resilient and durable this furniture really is. We really love working on this furniture because it’s really unique. Take a look at the swing for instance, how unique it is. It has a wooden canopy — when have you seen a swing have a wooden canopy that’s actually made out of this super rare wood?

I also wanted to point out the swing bench seat itself. It’s contoured here, it has some contour here, which is really nice. I love the arms and the shape of the arms — it’s very unique to the Jensen Jarrah sort of style that they have. Another beautiful attribute is that they used wood instead of chain for the support of the bench, which is really, really nice. I like the support of the canopy, this really nice sort of finishing touch here. Also the back support is really, really neat, and it’s just a beautiful piece.

If you come over here and take a look at some of the other pieces like the chaise lounges for instance, they’re very unique in terms of how the back is curved, the arms, the wheels. I mean this has to be 15-year-old furniture, and the rubber is still intact and still usable, and that’s another testament to how well built this furniture really is. Take a look at this table and dining chair set. The chairs are beautiful, beautiful style. It’s a really beautiful gigantic table that has a lazy Susan, which is really nice — now you can pass the block, go past the liquor or whatever.

Okay, so something I wanted to point out that I think is really important is how this furniture is constructed. So the Jensen Jarrah company actually used a bolt and a barrel nut on most of this furniture to fasten it together. Now with hot and cold temperatures and expanding and contracting of the wood, sometimes these bolts come loose, they get lost, and they are not easily and readily available. So if you can, if anything pops out, go ahead save it, call us when we come out to refinish, we can go ahead and fasten this together. Otherwise, when we pick up everyone’s furniture, we definitely do a check, make sure everything is absolutely structurally sound, that there’s no bolts that are missing. We tighten everything to make sure it’s absolutely perfect for delivery.

We’re about to get started on the cleaning portion of our process, but I wanted to point out a few things about the characteristics and weathering that is occurring. So as you can see right here, we have the horizontal surfaces that are weathered gray — that’s typical. Horizontal surfaces absorb more UV, more moisture, and more contaminants than the vertical surfaces. You can also see that even though we did this many years ago, it still has some of the color here, which is this sort of reddish purplish color, which is the remnants of the transoxide pigments.

I wanted to point out that we’ve got some green algae that has grown on the furniture — it’s really, really bad, looks terrible. And really when you’re adjusting this chaise lounge, you’re laying out by the pool, you grab this lever here to adjust the back of the chaise lounge and then you grab your suntan lotion or you grab your burger or chips or something you’re eating and then put it to your mouth — that is not what you want in your mouth. Definitely do not want algae in your stomach, so that needs to be cleaned off.

I also wanted to point out we’ve got some black moldy mildewy stuff happening. This has probably happened because there’s a cushion on top, and what tends to happen is the cushion traps moisture in between the wood and the cushion fabric itself. Even if it’s Sunbrella fabric or a high-end acrylic fabric, it is going to trap the water in between the cushion and the wood when it rains or when somebody gets out of the pool and it’s really, really wet. Take a look at this chaise lounge — we have more green algae, looks unsightly. We’ve got a little cobweb action going on here, a little bit of grass probably from the gardeners, and it just needs to be maintained and refinished and it’ll come right back. And we’ll go ahead and show you the process on how to do that.

So we start our cleaning process by saturating the wood to loosen up dirt and debris so that when we power wash, it knocks it off really easy. It’s just a real good idea to get it wet thoroughly — that way the washing will go smoothly and knock off all the dirt, algae, and black mold and mildew. You want to really saturate it, get it fully wet. Obviously if you have multiple pieces, you can wet it down at the same time, do it in bulk.

After we fully saturated the wood, we now do a mild calculated power wash. Power washing is a great tool for doing just that — cleaning. It’s not a refinishing tool. So we just want to wash off the surface dirt and contaminants, and we want to keep a steady even height with the correct tip and correct pressure. Look how amazing it is blasting off that green algae and contaminants.

The chaise lounges have now been thoroughly cleaned, and there’s quite a bit of difference, but it’s not perfect. So you can see here the algae, that green algae, has been removed. Some of the previous coating has been removed, that black mold and mildew — most of it has been removed — but there’s still some here on this chaise lounge. Again, this is where the cushion probably trapped some water and the water just sat there and sat there and sat there. And imagine over the course of let’s say two, three, four years, it leaves these marks, and I’m pretty confident we can get most of them out with the next step, which is sanding. But look how beautiful they turn out with just cleaning.

I want to make sure that we understand that cleaning alone is not refinishing. These chaise lounges need to be sanded to expose the beautiful fresh new grain and to remove all these imperfections that you still see on the wood. Remove all this oxidation and hopefully this damage from water being trapped in between the cushion.

The next step is sanding. Sanding is the most important step because it exposes fresh new smooth raw wood. We cannot skip this step. This step is what’s going to make the wood look brand new, beautiful, and smooth again. We sand the entire piece of furniture, in between the slats, the top and the bottom, and everything so we get a perfect, smooth, and beautiful outcome for your outdoor furniture. Smaller palm sanders are used so we can fit into every crack and crevice that we possibly can. We start off with a heavy grit sandpaper and then smooth it out with a fine grit sandpaper.

So the furniture has been fully sanded, and now we need to wash it down to remove the dust from the grain. We want to make sure that we get in between the slats, thoroughly wash it down, because the Jarrah wood is an open grain hardwood. Get underneath and really, really saturate the wood.

Now we’ll go ahead and apply the wood brightener, and it’s always best to apply the wood brightener with a pump sprayer or a backpack sprayer so you can do it efficiently and you can do multiple pieces. You can technically wipe it on as well, but it’s always more thorough with the sprayer. You want to make sure that the wood is fully saturated with water and that the wood brightener does not dry. You always want to keep a sort of wet edge when you are applying the wood brightener. Make sure we get it on everything because we want to eliminate mold, mildew, algae, contaminants and help prevent it as well. Just thoroughly saturate it. You can go ahead and let it sit for a small period of time and make sure it doesn’t dry.

We want to go ahead and hose it off while everything is still wet so we can neutralize the wood brightener. And again, we’re doing a thorough wash of the furniture to neutralize the wood brightener and prep it for the next step, which will be applying the sealer.

So here we have it — a fully refinished Jarrah wood chaise lounge.

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So to recap, we cleaned it — remember, to remove surface dirt, green algae, black mold and mildew, gray oxidation, and previous coating. We sanded it to expose fresh new smooth raw wood. We washed it down to remove the dust from the grain. We applied wood brightener to promote color, help eliminate black mold, mildew, and algae, and now we’re about to apply the sealer.

So this is the Jarrah wood chaise lounge in its raw state. It’s sort of a salmon color, and it’s going to dramatically change once the sealer is applied. We’re applying an oil-based penetrating sealer that’s specifically formulated for hardwoods like Jarrah, teak, Ipe, kumaru, and all types of hardwoods. We apply it by brush so the guys really get to work it into the grain and get in between the slats and apply the maximum we possibly can. It’s all done by brush — there’s no reason to spray this, it’d get everywhere and it’d create a problem. We just gotta work it into the grain of the wood in between the slats just as he’s doing.

So we fully saturate the wood and protect it and enhance this beautiful grain. So the sealer is allowed to penetrate — so we’re applying a really good amount of sealer so that the wood will accept it to its full potential. It’s soaking in, you can see the bubbles still soaking in, so you want to probably leave it and let it sit in for, I don’t know, five to ten minutes. You know, if you’re doing this in direct sun you may need to wipe off the excess a little bit sooner because if you wait too long it’s going to get sticky and it’s going to gum up and you’re not going to be able to wipe it off. You kind of got to know the flash point here.

We’re working it in between the slats, applying, allowing it to penetrate. He’s done one side of the table and wiped it off, and the other side where he’s working it into the grain and allowing it to penetrate. So here we have it, he’s wiping off the excess. The sealer has penetrated to its full potential, so we’re going ahead and taking off the excess.

This is not a multiple coat system, it is a one-coat system where you allow the oil to penetrate to its full potential and then you wipe off the excess. Multiple coats and multiple coat systems does not mean better. In fact, you never want to use varnish on this type of wood. It is not as tight of a grain as teak, and you can see it here — we’ve got little microscopic cracks in the grain. That’s normal, it’s still a hardwood, but if you put some sort of varnish or multiple coat system on here, it’s going to crack right along this grain here and continue to crack and blister and peel and water will get underneath the multiple coat finish.

You always want to use the oil-penetrating sealer. These are maintainable finishes. The characteristic is to gradually fade over time and essentially go back to bare wood, and as long as you catch it at the right time you can simply clean and reapply. That’s the beauty of using this type of protective coating — is maintainability. The taboo subject — maintainability. Right? Unfortunately, there isn’t a product that’s going to last ten years or five years or three years. It’s all about maintainability, ease of maintenance. The microclimate that this furniture is going in — in Manhattan Beach, California — it should ultimately be recoated every eight to twelve months or whenever visually necessary.

Here we have him wiping off the excess, he’s allowed it to penetrate, and look at this beautiful outcome — beautiful, rich, and matte Jarrah wood.

All right guys, we now have the Jarrah wood furniture restoration project fully completed. All of the sealer has been applied to everything, and take a look at these tables here for instance — beautiful and clean, sort of blood red Jarrah brown color, ready for dining and entertaining. The chaise lounges are now fully clean, the black mold and mildew and the green algae has been cleaned off, ready for lounging, relaxing, laying out in the sun by the pool.

Take a look at the back side here — booyah! No more green algae, no more disgusting green contaminants on the backside of these chaise lounges. Just beautiful reddish brown Jarrah color. Take a look at the dining set — wow. Just a beautiful, beautiful style here by Jensen Jarrah. Very, very unique. Beautiful, ready to dine. Touch the table — it’s not going to be dirty with green algae or black mold or any disgusting contaminants. That’s all been removed.

Take a look at the swing — we removed the top for delivery. Absolutely stunning. We’ll go over here to the deep seating — looks really nice. We re-strapped everything, beautiful, ready to go, ready for another ten to fifteen years. And this client has quite a collection of Jensen Jarrah furniture, and we brought it back to brand new condition, just like the day they bought it.

We are loading up the furniture for our exclusive free pickup and delivery to all of Los Angeles and Orange County. The guys carefully unload and place the furniture back in the area we picked it up from. Now take a look at the befores and afters — what a difference. It’s absolutely amazing and a true testament to how beautiful and resilient this furniture really is. From gray oxidized look to beautiful natural reddish brown Jarrah wood.

We made brand new cushions and outdoor furniture covers as well. This furniture is amazing and very valuable and very rare, as the Jarrah furniture is not being made currently by any major manufacturers. So if you have Jarrah furniture, it’s definitely worth it to refinish and restore this amazing wood.

Thank you guys so much for tuning in to our Jarrah furniture refinishing video. If you guys have any questions, leave them down in the comments below. We’ll go ahead and answer them. If you have any suggestions on how we could do our job better or any techniques that you may know of that we didn’t add to this video, just let us know. We’re always open to comments and suggestions. Go ahead and click the like button if you like this video. Go ahead and follow us because we’ll have more videos coming out just as informative. Thank you so much for tuning in. Tim Gilliam with Teak Master signing out.