A dusty cabinet top can deceive you. It will often feel worn, rough and in need of sandpaper, but that texture isn’t necessarily damage to the wood itself. It could be dried wax buildup, spilled food and grease, furniture polish, accumulated grime or just the sticky buildup that occurs over time.
The biggest mistake you can make is to start sanding before you clean. Sanding a dirty surface will clog the sandpaper and ruin the finish, while the residue can rub across the surface and work itself into scratches, open grain and dents. It may become cloudy or hazy in spots and feel uneven, but it will just feel worse because you are now using paper designed to clean wood against a surface with wax and grease.
Start small. Pick a small, hidden area of the furniture such as the bottom edge of a table, the back of a drawer front, the bottom side of a cabinet door, etc. Gently clean this spot with a soft cloth and a mild, appropriate cleaner for the type of finish you have, being careful not to saturate the item.
You won’t strip the finish, you’ll just remove dirt and debris, and get a better idea of the condition of the finish beneath the grime. Does the colour seem more warm and woodier when you have cleaned away the dirty film? Does the grain pattern look better? Has the dull film lifted to reveal a smooth, scratch free finish? Does the finish look scratched and worn? Stained or damaged? If it looks good now, cleaning and buffing it might be the entire project.
You may find damage that cleaning didn’t fix such as water damage under the finish, a scratched surface or deep scratches or a patch where a person’s hand has wiped the surface over and over again for years.
Cleaning first is most important near edges, carved details and veneer. These areas leave no margin of error, so if you start sanding over a dirty, veneered surface, the thin veneer is likely to become damaged before you even realise how heavily you are sanding. You might also notice that the carved details, when sanded, can quickly flatten and take on the appearance of having lost their softer edges, that made the piece more natural looking. A good surface allows you to use less pressure and choose the most appropriate grit for the job.
Cleaning also is an opportunity to check moving parts and hardware. If you have a knob, handles or a drawer that is sticking, take a quick photo or note its placement, and then take the hardware off to make reassembly easier. Once the piece has had a good cleaning, look at the hardware more closely to see if you can figure out whether it’s stuck because it is a dirty surface, because there is swelling wood, the runner is damaged or it was just poorly installed. Not every problem needs to be covered with a new coat of poly, sanded and refinished, or filled with an epoxy and sanded down. Let the piece dry completely once it’s cleaned before moving on. Touch the surface and look across it, see if there are any areas that are still feeling tacky. If you’re still feeling a bit of grease or oil, you might try cleaning more gently and sanding once it’s dry. If the surface feels great but is looking uneven, the time has come to sand, using the wood grain and an appropriate grit.
The furniture might not yet look as good as it could but this is when you will be confident in what is dirt, what is old finish and what is actual damage.