Soda Blasting Paint And Stain

I painted these corbels a few years ago with milk paint. Milk paint is pretty and chips on its own…I have more about painting with milk paint, here. While I do like them painted, I’ve been wanting to strip the paint off for quite some time now to let all of that amazing wood character show!

*Affiliate links in this post

I picked these corbels up at an antique store for $15 total for both of them. That goes to show that you CAN find a good deal at an antique store sometimes!

The wood underneath it was pretty dark when I bought them and I remember trying to decide if I was going to strip the stain off or paint them. I guess the paint won. With soda blasting, it can strip the paint and the stain so I was excited to see what color the stain would be in the end after blasting.

This is what my soda blaster looks like. It comes with instructions of how to put it together and then it connects to an air compressor. The air compressor is what pressurizes the soda blaster tank so that the soda medium will come out. It’s kind of annoying to unscrew the top and fill the blaster up with soda medium every time it runs out, but I guess it’s a good trade off for being able to get the paint and stain out of small decorative areas and not having to sand.

Soda blaster medium looks like baking soda. I guess it kind of is like baking soda…I’m not really sure what the difference is. Maybe it’s just more coarse. I used the fine medium for this project, but they do have more coarse mediums. Sometimes I use a funnel to put it in, but sometimes I just curl up a piece of paper to put it in because the funnel that I have has a small spout and takes forever to get it inside.

When I’m don’t blasting, it kind of looks like a dusting of snow. It’s definitely not a dusting of snow today in the 90° weather. But, if my kids were still little they would probably want to make Tucson snow angels in it. It’s about as close to snow as we will get here in Tucson.

Always make sure to wear a safety mask, safety goggles, and earplugs. That soda medium gets everywhere! You can even wear long pants and a long shirt to keep it from getting on your skin. It’s never done anything to harm my skin, but it does give a little sting, kind of like sand getting sprayed at you. I chose to be stung today since it was 90° out.

The nozzle where the soda medium comes out is very small on this blaster. I’m not sure if there are other blasters out there that have larger nozzles or not, I haven’t really looked into it yet. The smaller nozzle works well, it just takes longer with bigger spaces. Check out all of that character in the wood and how the lines of the decorative area pop now! I love it!!

My fave part, the “after”!!! Ahhhhh!!! Why did I not do this sooner!!!!

I will definitely be using these in our house when we build!

I wish I knew where these originated from! They are sooooo pretty!

All of that amazing wood character was hiding under that paint! I’m pretty sure the corbels feel better having the paint off of them too!

I’m all out of soda medium now or I probably would have started blasting other things too, haha.

What do you think of the soda boss in process? Do you think it’s worth all the mess?

I was pretty much covered in soda medium after this process, but look at those corbels!