veneer blanket box refinishing advice, Please

I am a beginner looking to refinish this veneered blanket box, I tried to clean it up with a solution of water/vinegar/detergent with light sponge and the damaged areas of varnish? have come off completely and some are now tacky :( How do I take off the varnish, paint stripper or just sand it off? im afraid to damage the veneer it seems pretty thick but i don't want to go to hard on it.

I have some monocel clear water based varnish to refinish it with as I want a more natural colour to the wood not the yellow/orange of old varnish.

The box also has a mothball smell that i cant get rid of.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated as this is my first time with veneer refinishing.Attachment 483940Attachment 483941Attachment 483942

As you suspected, sanding should be avoided with veneered furniture. The best way to approach this would be to use one of the safer gel-type paint strippers to remove all the old varnish. Follow the instructions on the container to clean the surface thoroughly after you remove the stripper.

Even the clear water-based finishes can discolour with age, but I agree, they should be slower to do so.

The Napthalene smell is probably with you for life, I'm afraid. The chemical has a strong smell even in the minutes quantities. You could try washing the interior surfaces with metho, but I don't know if that would work. Naptha is quite a waxy substance so might be more amenable to white spirits - but it has its own smell. I used to be able to buy a dry cleaning spirit called Murlex which had little or no smell - see if you can find that anywhere.

Good luck

David

If you already have a bottle of metho at hand, try wiping it down with that first.

Should you notice 'colour' coming off onto a clean rag, then that should be all you need. Well... metho, elbow grease and a lot of applications. :rolleyes:

Thanks for the advice on the gel paint stripper David :)

ohh thanks I do have some metho, I might give it a try on the under side and see how well that works before I get the stripper.