Another Wood Bleaching Tutorial – One Room Challenge Week 7

So, this was supposed to be a post about the new nightstand bases we built. With the beautiful cane detail, light wood tones, and ample storage.

This is not that post.

Because, sometimes in DIY, things don’t always go as planned. With only two weeks left, as I approached Andrew about building said bases, he wasn’t very enthused. At this point, we essentially had two weekends to build them, and that would be a stretch. If I’m honest, I probably underestimated the time it would take to compete this project. Especially since I wanted to add caning – a material I have never worked with before.

So, what to do when your lead carpenter walks on the job? Pivot.

After I came to terms with the fact that the new nightstands were not happening, I regrouped and reassessed the situation. We have nightstands. They have a concrete top, which I like, and was planning to reuse in the previous scenario. But they are a dark walnut color, which I don’t like, and they lack functional storage. See, we used to have nightstands that were twice as wide, with 3 drawers each. You can fit a surprisingly large amount of stuff in our old nightstands. But once we switched rooms with our two eldest children (more on that here), the copious amount of nightstand storage dwindled.

But could I change our current nightstands enough to solve my issues? Keep reading and see for yourself.

My biggest issue with the nightstands was the wood tone. We stained them dark walnut 11 years ago when we originally built them, which is the same color as our bedroom floor. It was just a little too matchy-matchy. There was no contrast between the two, which made the room feel flat.

So today, I’m sharing another wood bleaching process! Earlier this year, I used regular ol’ Clorox to bleach some yellow pine we used to build our barn door. For this project, I tried a new method using hydrogen peroxide and Lye.

How to Take the Red Out of Red Oak

For this process, you’ll need to start with raw wood. So, if you have new, unfinished wood, you are good to go. Otherwise you will need to stand or strip (depending on your situation) the finish from your wood before you start. Our nightstands were previously finished with dark walnut stain and some sort of polyurethane finish, luckily a light coat, so we opted to sand them.

1. Sand

Since Andrew built these nightstands, it wasn’t too difficult to deconstruct them a bit to make the sanding process easier. He removed the top horizontal pieces, we later adjusted their height, then popped off the shelf above the drawer. We used our orbital palm sanders for the majority of this project, with 80 grit sandpaper. We hand sanded a few of the spots, like the corners in the inset panel on the sides.

Already, the lighter wood tone was giving me all the feels. Also, I think its worth mentioning, and I don’t condone this, but we took the easy route and left the back of the nightstand untouched. So the front and sides of these nightstands are now a light wood color, but the back is still dark walnut. I mean, no one, unless they come help me move one day, will ever see the back of these nightstands. I don’t typically like to do this on projects – usually I’m a 110 percenter – but you can’t manufacture time and sometimes you gotta cut a corner or two.

Now that I’m done with the transparency, let’s move on.

After sanding with 80 grit paper, we went back over the wood with 120 grit paper. Then Andrew rebuilt the parts we had deconstructed. You might notice a slight difference. The original nightstand had a shelf near the top, which was useful for one thing – collecting dust. So, we removed that top shelf, cut the vertical pieces down a few inches, then reattached the horizontal shelf supports at the very top of the base. This solved my problem of the nightstands being a few inched too tall and eliminated the dust-collecting shelf.

2. Wood Bleaching

Now, you might think the color of the wood is near perfect. But I’ve polyurethaned enough red oak in my day to know that as soon as you add a finish to it, the red will start to show. So, how do you take the red out of red oak? Wood bleaching.

This is a straightforward process and really isn’t time consuming except for the amount of drying time it takes. Be advised that Lye is a chemical used for clogged drains, so take precautions. Always wear gloves and eye protection. Also, make sure to mix the Lye in a plastic cup, as it can react with some metals.

Here’s the wood bleaching process I used:

1. Wipe down wood to remove any sawdust, etc.

2. Mix 2 cups room temperature water with 2 tablespoons of Lye in a plastic cup.

3. Using a foam brush, saturate the wood with hydrogen peroxide. You can pour it on and spread it out, or simply brush it on. The key is to make sure all the wood is covered.

4. Liberally apply the Lye solution using a foam brush to the entire surface of the wood. You don’t want any spots to pool on the wood, but everything should be saturated.

5. Allow the wood to dry completely.

6. Rinse the wood. The Lye will leave a yellow residue on the wood as it dries. I used a wet microfiber cloth to throughly wipe down the wood surfaces.

I found that after one cycle of the bleaching process, the wood looked a little blotchy. So when the wood was completely dry after the first rinse, I repeated the cycle from step 3. When I completed the second cycle the nightstands looked like this:

But let’s see a side by side. Because we had to fill some holes on the drawers, I bleached them a day after the bases.

The top of the photo above is the bleached wood, the bottom is the unbleached drawer. Can you see the difference in the red hue? Although the sanded version may look similar to the bleached version, they would look much different after applying a clear coat.

After the bleaching process, I lightly sanded the wood again and wiped it down with a tack cloth.

To seal the wood, I used a foam brush to apply 3 coats of Minwax Polycrylic in a Matte finish. When I sealed our herringbone barn door, I used a polyurethane and felt the finish was a little too yellow. So I did a bit of googling this time and the Polycrylic was recommended as a finish that is less likely to have that yellow tint. I am very pleased with it and would recommend it for these types of projects. It also dries super fast and you can recoat in 2 hours, so I was able to apply all three coats in one day.

To finish, I added these gold metal pulls to the drawers, after adding some gold leaf rub ‘n buff to make them a little more antiqued.

So, they may not have the caning detail I was swooning over at the beginning of my ORC project, but they are still a vast improvement from the original nightstands. I’m still debating on the basket I have sitting on the shelf. I think I will keep looking to see if I can find something I love a bit more.

BEFORE

AFTER

Next week is the final week of the One Room Challenge and I’ll be sharing the entire primary bedroom reveal! If you want to catch up on any previous ORC posts, you can read them here:

• Primary Bedroom Design – Week 1
• Design Ideas – Week 2
• Modern Dresser Makeover – Week 3
• Vertical Wall Paneling – Week 4
• How I Make Design Decisions – Week 5
• How to Achieve Crisp Paint Lines – Week 6

Have you ever tried wood bleaching? Tell me, what’s the first piece of furniture you would try this on?! I’d love to hear what you think. Comment below or connect with me on instagram @elleandjaydesign. And you can find me on Pinterest too!

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