Cleaning Reclaimed Barn Wood

A friend and i managed to find a beautiful barn door and so i took it home and it sat in my garage for quite some time.

Cleaning reclaimed barn wood.

Before i could turn the barn door into a table top i needed to clean the wood up. 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. This tutorial shows you how to do it. It s a fact that reclaimed wood is usually dirty.

The last step to clean and refinish your reclaimed wood is to properly seal the wood. 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. And unfortunately i learned this the hard way. Cleaning reclaimed wood salvaged wood often comes with an intriguing backstory and a unique appearance but also with embedded dirt dust and debris.

I love how pretty reclaimed wood is. Give it a scrub or sand down. 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.

Within minutes the wood was looking much cleaner and i had lots of fun scrubbing that old nasty barn wood. Make sure not to use too much. The most important lesson i ve learned with reclaimed wood is when to lightly clean it vs. I used minwax polycrylic water based protective finish in clear satin you guys this stuff is amazing.

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. Once the wood was dry from its cleaning i used a regular paint brush and sparingly applied the minwax finish.