We have an oak kitchen set that gets sticky when the weather turns hot and humid. The chairs appear to have a gummy substance on the seat and back rest that sticks to your clothes; the sticky substance can be scraped off with you finger nail. The oak banister on our staircase suffers the same problem but not as bad. I suspect that both have been finished with varathane and that the gummy substance is a chemical reaction to body acids as this problem only exists on the surfaces that are in contact with hands and clothes. What is the best way to clean and refinish the chairs/banister
Answer:
That gummy substance is strictly human oils from hands and the like and will come off with a good wax remover or varsol. Good re-finishers are hard to find so you'll probably end up interviewing several.
