My wife found this old bankers chair at a thrift store last Christmas, and bought it for me as a gift with the intention to refinish it. Well, it only took almost a year for us to find the time to refinish it, but we think it came out beautifully.

I really do love these old chairs, maybe it’s the old metal swivel/rocking hardware , or maybe it’s the beauty and simplicity of the wood, or maybe it’s because refurbishing one was the last project I got to work on with my Dad.

This old oak bankers chair had been “refinished” at some point in its life with some sort of reddish brown opaque varnish, which hid all of its beauty. So the first step was removing the old finish. We used CitriStrip Paint and Varnish Stripping Gel, following all of the standard safety procedures using gloves and goggles. Using a plastic scraper, we were able to remove 90% or more of the old finish.

We then washed off the wood with some odorless mineral spirits and let it dry thoroughly. After drying for a few days, we followed up with sanding starting at 40 grit (to remove the remaining finish) and going all the way up to 220 grit.

Once the sanding was finished, it was onto staining. We used a Minwax dark walnut wipe on stain, and we were happy with a single coat. Some people may prefer a second coat to even out the final colors and hide some of the extreme variations in grain colors. I personally love how the grain pattern stands out after just a single coat.

The last step was applying two coats of Watco’s wipe on poly in a full gloss to give it a beautiful hand rubbed finish. We applied two coats, followed by a light sanding with 220 grit, and then one final coat of wipe on poly.

Here are a few before, during, and after pics:

We think this chair turned out even better than we expected. I love these old bankers chairs, and for $40 and some sweat equity we have a lovely chair to go in our office alongside our reclaimed pallet wood table.

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