Fire and smoke is very damaging in a home whether it is from a full-blown house fire or a mishap from cooking or a candle. When any type of fire occurs, your furniture is especially vulnerable because wood and upholstery materials are flammable and they are also porous which means they can absorb soot and smoke odors. There doesn’t have to be a fire for your furniture to sustain fire damage as candles or hot dishes can leave burn marks and just smoke alone can stain the surface. When this type of damage occurs to your furniture, it is important to clean and restore it right away to reverse the effects of the damage and revitalize its original appearance.
If your furniture experiences extensive fire or smoke damage, it may be best to contact a furniture restoration professional. For light soot and smoke damage, the following tips will help you clean and restore your furniture.
Before Restoring Your Furniture
In the aftermath of a fire, your priority is to ensure that everyone is safe and that there is no further threat of danger. Serious damage to your home 
requires immediate fire damage restoration services so do not hesitate to contact a professional to help limit the damage and get your home restored. These professionals can handle large-scale fire damage safely and they have the best tools and cleaning products to get the job done. The same can be said for your furniture if it is heavily damaged by a fire. Furniture restoration professionals can fully rebuild and refinish fire-damaged furniture but if your furniture is only damaged from soot or smoke, you can try restoring it yourself.
Restoring Soot and Smoke Damaged Furniture
Most furniture found in a home is made from wood which can absorb soot and smoke odors. Before you start cleaning up smoke damage from your wood furniture, you must determine if the wood is finished or unfinished. Each type requires a different procedure and cleaning products and using the wrong method can cause additional damage. The following characteristics can help you determine if your wood furniture is finished or unfinished:
- Finished Wood: Finished wood furniture has a layer of sealer or varnish on the surface. Most wood furniture in a home including dining room tables, cabinet facings, desks, dressers, and china cabinets are protected with a finish. Finished wood is best cleaned by working a cleaning agent into the wood grain to lift the dirt or soot.
- Unfinished Wood: Unfinished wood furniture is much more vulnerable to smoke or soot damage because it is not well protected. Structural wood such as support beams and wood inside drawers and cabinets is typically unfinished. This type of wood can absorb a lot of soot and smoke odor which makes it difficult to clean. It is possible to mask smoke odors by sealing the surface but some homeowners may not want to seal an unfinished piece. However, there is no guarantee that the soot or smoke odor can be removed from unfinished wood furniture completely.
Restoring Finished Smoke Damaged Wood Furniture
If the soot or smoke damage to your furniture is dry and free of oils, follow these steps:
- Clean the entire surface of the piece with a HEPA vacuum or lambswool duster.
- Remove gross soot residue with a dry chemical sponge. Do not scrub the residue too hard with the sponge because this could cause the soot residue to become permanently embedded into the pores or wood grain.
Wood furniture that is affected by oily smoke or soot residue must be cleaned with the following steps:
- Clean the entire surface with a cotton rag and either Wood Cleaner or Murphy Oil Soap.
- 0000 grade steel wool can help remove tough residue but you must remember to scrub with the direction of the wood grain.
- If the soot residue is not removed with the previous steps, try using a heavily diluted solution containing Unsmoke Degrease-All. Make sure you rinse the surface after using a degreaser.
- You must polish the wood after cleaning if you use a degreaser. If you didn’t use a degreaser, this step may not be necessary.
Restoring Unfinished Smoke Damaged Wood Furniture
The exact process for restoring unfinished wood furniture may differ from piece to piece according to the nature of the damage and roughness of the wood.
These tips can help you restore unfinished wood furniture:
- Remove areas that are severely burned.
- Spray the entire piece with FreshWave IAQ Air and Surface Spray or Unsmoke 9-D-9 to help remove the odor.
- Remove dry soot from the surface with a HEPA vacuum.
- Use a chemical sponge to scrub excessive soot residue.
- Use a pump-up sprayer to apply a degreaser to the surface. Make sure you dilute the degreaser according to its instructions and wipe the surface with a nylon brush after the application. If there is a strong smoke odor, you can add a deodorizer to this solution. Rinse the surface thoroughly after treatment with clean water.
- Sand away stains with sandpaper.
- If there is still a strong smoke odor after completing these steps, you may need to call a professional to treat your furniture with thermal fogging, hydroxyl generation, or ozone generation.
If your wood furniture is affected by smoke or soot damage from a house fire or some other incident, you can clean and restore it yourself with these tips. However, you should not hesitate to call a furniture restoration professional if you are not satisfied with the results or believe that the damage to your furniture is too much for you to handle. These professionals are experts in furniture refinishing and they also offer disaster furniture restoration services specifically for fire and smoke-damaged furniture. Your wooden furniture is an investment and having it restored or refinished after sustaining smoke damage is a great way to protect this investment.
