Refinishing An Old Bed Frame With Stripwell

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I had a vision for this guest bedroom and it included an old vintage style bed frame. I found this one on Facebook Marketplace and I knew it would work perfectly! But I’d have to strip the clear coat off of it. Something like this and this is the look I was after for the bed. I had a friend reach out and tell me about Stripwell, it’s a non toxic furniture/paint stripper and she said it worked really well! So I figured I’d give it a try. You don’t have to wear gloves with this stuff since it’s not harmful to the skin like a normal furniture stripper is.

You’re supposed to spray it on, let it sit for a little while and then spray on another coat and let that sit as well. You can do this a 3rd time if you need to but the clear coat was bubbling up so I started scraping.

This is the point that I realized that this was going to take a while…

Honestly, I’d rather build furniture from scratch than refinish a piece like this. I had to get into the decorative areas with an old tooth brush and I went around the legs with a drill brush attachment. I tried to connect the brush to the drill but it was easier to just hold it and go over the legs.

Once that first layer was done, I did the whole process again. Spraying the Stripwell on and letting it sit and then scraping again.

This took a whole day and I was exhausted! Once the headboard was done I was not looking forward to the footboard. But it did take the clear coat off like I wanted, it just didn’t take the stain off like I had hoped, a sander probably would have been better for that, but I was okay with the results.