You can very likely strip and refinish your cabinet at home but it will
be much messier, more costly, and time-consuming than I'm sure you
anticipated.

It isn't entirely clear to me what you describe. I am going to assume
that you had a lacquer topcoat since this is very likely to have been the
case. The solvent stripper dissolved the lacquer as well as any lacquer
toner coats. It won't necessarily drive the stain further in unless you are
giving it the chance to do so. If that is the case, you can try repeatedly
wiping down the piece with fresh rags and solvent until nothing more shows
up on the rag. This presupposes that you do not have any pigment stain
which may slowly abrade off the surface as the binder is removed by the
fresh stripper.

The real key is to keep the stripper wet and not allow it to dry on the
wood. I would even suggest wiping down the freshly stripped piece with
clean rags and fresh stripper dispensed from a squeeze bottle so that any
finish and stain left behind gets removed. It will also keep the finish
from redepositing back on the wood as it is cleaned, a common occurrence
when using mineral spirits to remove the residual wax from wax containing
finish strippers.

By the way, $900 is a good price unless the cabinet is a small one.

Good Luck

"Chris Lang" wrote in message
. ..
All,

I have recently purchased a mahogany china cabinet from an auction that I
wish to refinish. I started stripping the piece with a spray on solvent -
but I'm noticing something that I dont like!

It looks as if the stain applied before is not coming out like I need it
to.
Maybe I have expectations that arent realistic (this is my first
re-finishing effort), but I was expecting the wood to be a natural-like
color after I stripped the original varnish off. Then...I called a
professional refinisher for an estimate...

He mentioned that what I have done is drive the stain from the original
finish further into the wood of the cabinet - and that it's basically
impossible to refinish at home! I would agree with his first point - but
because he wanted to charge me $900.00 to refinish the piece - I'm not
ready
to give up yet.

Anyone have any ideas on what it takes to successfully strip the old
finish
off of this cabinet? Maybe I'm missing some pretty simple techniques that
can make this job somewhat easier -

Thanks!

Chris Lang