The Bleaching Technique

I decided to try a technique called 'bleaching', I have two pieces of chunky dark wood furniture. I love them both, but having recently decorate my lounge they no longer looked right. I read and researched a technique that literally uses bleach to lighten the wood. I still needed to sand all the original top surface of in order to get down to the bare wood. Once wood has been stained dark it is quite difficult to get it light again so using this process helped. I got both pieces a lot lighter, but I wanted it lighter still, so I used a white wash and then sealed using Ronseal's white ash matt varnish. In order to tone them in with my new colour scheme I used the same yellow paint that we used in the room. This was then also soften by using a top coat of the same ash white varnish. I am very pleased with the results and both pieces now match the room much better.