Hello all! I recently moved into a 1929 tudor house and much of the woodwork needs restoration. I’ve noticed in several places that the wood has this weird green coating in areas. I can’t clean it off. Can anyone shed some light on what this might be? I’ve attached some photos. I am a novice and I am really hoping that this is something I can fix without having to strip and refinish everything! Thanks so much for you help!
Replies
This may be residual paint from the last strip off?
Thanks for your reply! The wood has never been painted.
Could be whatever they used to clean the woodwork. The green is in corners and the most pronounced pores. Try cleaning a couple of spots with TSP to see if that removes it.
Thanks for the suggestion. Is no-rinse TSP better to use? Any danger of either version taking off the finish? I have never worked with that cleaner before. Thanks again!
Could it be old wax? Maybe try a wax stripper on a small spot before trying heavier chemicals?
There is real TSP and a new fake version. I've never used the fake. I've never found TSP to be very harsh.
In your first picture It appears as though there is the same or similar green residue on the brass / metal hardware. Is this so?
There is green on the brass doorknob but I think it is different. That’s the powder room door so I think decades of wet hands have created a patina there. Throughout the house some of the wood looks like it has an overall green tint. And then some areas are like the pictures I posted—where the green only seems to be present on certain parts of the woodgrain.
Spic and Span can stain like that. Do you have it on good authority that its never been painted? Because of the age of the wood and exposer to light over the nearly last one hundred years it may be the tannic acid bleeding up out of the pours. If anyone out their knows how wood would turn green just by itself please let the rest of us know.
Whatever it is, it is in the softer parts of the wood. Over time these have worn or shrunk more than the harder part of the grain.
It is likely that this is either an applied product like milk paint, wax or the residue of a cleaning product.
The wood appears to be Oak so some may have penetrated quite deeply.
If it were mine, I'd start with an inconspicuous spot and try some methylated spirits (denatured alcohol in the US I think?) this is unlikely to work, but if it does it will also be harmless to the wood and finish unless it is shellac, which is very unlikely.
Mineral turps next up. This will dissolve waxes - use only a small amount on a rag or you may increase penetration into the pores of the wood.
If those fail then it is probably a water-based stain or paint and you are probably going to need to try steel wool or paint stripper. This will of course wear the finish, which will need to be re-done afterwards, but that is no biggie. Well, At least I'm not going to have to do it....
The third picture on the right sure reminds me of the patina that I saw on the Fir trim work as well as the pews which were also made of solid Fir in a church I attended as a child.
The old world immigrants who built the church were also big on the use of Shellac as their finish of choice which I'm guessing was cheap and plentiful and could be cut with a variety of thinners - turpentine being chief among them.
Is it possible that what we're seeing is the oxidization of Shellac?
Just spitballin' here.
They used to put heavy metals in paints, varnish, shellac, etc,. I suspect its one of those which is oxidizing. Lead, copper?
This looks like the varnish and the shellac along with some of the oil based stain have been removed by some long time use of aggressive cleaning solutions. Some standard techniques for finishing wood in the early 1900's was the use of oil based stain. I have had my grandfathers methods passed on to me by my father, and now have been able to instruct my son in some of the finer points of these methods. Typical stain was made from 50 - 50 boiled linseed oil and turpentine, with tinting colors added to achieve the desired color. "Drying" linseed oil takes time for the oxygen in the air to aid in cross-linking the active sites in the oil, hardening the stain and thus prevent the pick-up of the color into the first finish application. One accepted way to hurry the reaction is to add "Japan Drier" to the stain. This is typically a metal salt or napthanate. (See Wikipedia article on driers) The method my grandfather used was to make the first application over the stain, an alcohol based "sealer", thus clear shellac was used to prevent picking up the oil and stain, rather than a turpentine based varnish. Then after sanding lightly, 3 or 4 coats of varnish were applied as the final protection. Varnishing over this condition without stripping the old finish is asking for trouble. You could use "real" TSP to make sure that all the old furniture polish and paste wax is removed, but this won't solve the problem with the missing shellac and depleted oil stain. Electing not to use TSP on the varnish will probably result in the new varnish peeling off the areas where the polish or wax were not removed. Complete refinishing is probably the best solution, but will also require the most effort.
Higher end homes from that era near me have trouble being released. They were indeed adding white lead to varnish on woodwork. Less expensive homes used plain varnish. You can get swabs for lead testing at your local home center to see if this is the case.
Thank you all so much for your replies. The woodwork in this house is so inconsistent—there seems to be so much variation is how different areas have fared over the years. Some have the greenish cast in areas, some look greenish all over. I'd love to just refinish it all but I am overwhelmed at the idea of taking that on. Any suggestions on what I should use? Is there a favored stripping product for wood of this age? I am assuming that if I just strip and refinish, I won't need to use TSP at all right? Maybe I will just take my time and focus on one area of one room at a time. What do you all suggest to use as a final protective coat once I get the stain color right?
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