Pine wood furniture(30+ yrs.old) needs restoring.

Check out this article:

https://www.hunker.com/13403854/how-to-restore-pine-furniture

myself I would strip the old finish off with the orange stripper like you can buy at home improvement centers. After you got the old finish off you can lightly sand them to smooth out the grain from the stripper and either blow them off with compressed air if you have a air compressor or use a clean dry cloth rag to wipe off any excess dust before using a new stain and sealer or lacquer or varnish, etc! If your not use to using lacquer stains you may want to use a oil stain that’s more forgiving for novice users to apply. Lacquer stains take a little practice to apply evenly without having light and dark areas applying the stain. But you can apply either stain with a clean cloth. Old diapers make great stain rags! But old shirts will work too! Old wash clothes can work but watch out for strings coming off the wash clothes that you can just pull off. I highly recommend Watco oil that comes in a few different colors as well as clear! If you choose a color one good coat should be enough if it’s dark enough to your liking? Adding more coats will make it darker! Once it’s the darkness you want, you can leave it as it or you have a couple other choices! You can either add clear Watco oil after the color oil has dried very well. At least a few hours if you only used one coat of color? More coats of oil will take longer to dry! The first few coats can soak into wood and therefore dry much faster! Extra coats will build up on top of the wood and take more time to dry. If the stain starts feeling a little rough from extra coats added, you can lightly sand with 220 grit wet/dry sand paper and wet the sand paper in your oil as you sand it or you can also use steel wool and pour oil in the steel wool to lightly sand it as well. Either works just fine! More coats of clear oil will give you a deeper shine or gloss finish. But it will take time! You need to let each coat dry least a day before adding more coats if you have already added several coats? You can speed up this process by using a lacquer or varnish finish but you will want to wait no less than 72 hours after you applied your last coat of oil before applying any other finish for a gloss finish!

Note: a bit of safety warning whenever using stains and/or other finish with rags! Never ever leave rags wrinkled up or piled in a stack or thrown in a garbage can! Always lay rags flat out somewhere where they can dry completely before safely throwing away. Otherwise they can spontaneously combust if wrinkled up or in piles! So be very careful with dirty rags! Best of luck, have any other questions just ask and I be glad to help however I can!

I work at an antique store where we use a light steel wool and paste wax to clean pine furniture. Paste wax comes in several colors...clear or dark. Buff out the wax and you have a quick and easy way to clean and shine your pine furniture. Good luck, Joe