I did an experimental DIY this week and oh my gosh it turned out better than I imagined it would! I picked up a wood trunk that I absolutely loved but the color was a little too dark for me … So I thought I’d give bleaching it a try! It turned out amazing & I love the way it looks now.

Supplies

• Wood Bleach
• Small Scrub Brush
• Courser Scrub Brush
• Bucket For Mixture
• Dry Cloth
• Bucket/hose for rinsing

Before Wood Bleach:

After Wood Bleach:

I recommend bleaching your wood piece somewhere outside so that you don’t have to worry about a mess & can use the sun to help bleach your wood. I picked up this wood bleach off of amazon, here. For this piece I did not do any prep work before using the wood bleach, I didn’t sand or strip anything off I let the wood bleach do all of the work.

The DIY Steps

1. Bring your wood piece outside in a spot that can get messy (or lay something down if it cannot) and into the sun if possible.
2. Grab a bucket and mixed the hot water & wood bleach together in the bucket. Follow instructions for mixing!
3. To apply the mixture to the wood we used a smaller brush and heavily coated the trunk with the bleach.
4. Then using a courser scrubbing brush, scrub the bleach into the trunk to really strip into the wood.
5. When brushing bleach into the wood make sure you are brushing with the grain, not against the grain.
6. For this piece, we applied the wood bleach and scrubbed the trunk four times in total. Depending on the amount of stain on your piece you may have to do more or less.
7. After applying our final layer of the wood bleach, rinse the trunk off and dry it with a clean cloth.
8. Leave the trunk out in the sun to dry fully.

The sun is a great natural bleaching agent. You can use the sun to help brighten your white painted piece or help with wood bleach like we did. We left the trunk out in the sun to dry & our trunk was completely transformed. The wood bleach removed all of the stain and extra build-up from the trunk! I choose to leave the trunk unsealed, however, if you wanted to seal your furniture you definitely could. I absolutely love the new look of the trunk and it fits my personal taste so much more now.

The transformation of this piece is seriously more than I could have ever expected. For my first time using wood bleach, I am obsessed with this product & think it is completely worth it to get … Now it’s time to go wood bleach everything I own! Haha. I hope you enjoyed seeing the transformation if you have other antiques you are looking to clean check out my post on cleaning antiques here! Thank you for stopping by the blog today and every day.

xx liz marie