'Bird's Eye' Dresser Set

 This set of dressers looks like it has really taken a beating!  The tall dresser doesn't stand up straight and the drawers are completely falling apart. The short dresser isn't in much better condition.

 In addition the 'birds eye maple' veneer is flaking off of the sides of  both dressers and the tops of the dressers have water damage to the finish which is worn very thin.  These dressers needed a complete over haul.   They started out with having the old finish stripped off so that we could get down to the raw wood.  Once this happened we began on the extensive repairs.  All the drawer joints had to be taken apart and glued back together.  Some of the drawer bases were broken and needed to be replaced.   The drawer glides had to be worked on so that the drawers could slide in and out smoothly.
And then we have the veneer issues to deal with..

 The old veneer was so badly damaged that we had to replace it most of it on both of the dressers.  Both tops received new veneer treatment as well as the sides of both dressers.  Bird's Eye Maple veneer is a very high end veneer with namesake 'eyes' scattered all over creating a beautiful ribbony appearance.

Once the many repairs were done the dresser set was stained with a Honey Maple stain and finished with a Satin sheen finish.  While we would have put any color/sheen combination that our client wanted onto this set,  we are very happy they chose the way they did.  Honey Maple and Satin are truely the perfect combination to highlight the gorgeous Bird's Eye veneer.  We couldn't be more happy with how this set turned out.

Fixing Water Damage on Furniture

The holidays can be so damaging to our lovely table tops!  A water cup gets left on the table to long and creates a ring.  A table decoration gets over watered and creates a bigger ring.  A hot serving dish gets put down without a trivet and leaves a big white square.    What do you do?  Do you replace your table?  Do you try and hide it from now on with a table cloth?  No, and no!   White water damage marks on your table can be repaired.  I can give you some tips to try at home, or you can bring it to us and we can do the work for you (you have better things to do,  like drinking eggnog and shopping and skiing!)

The 'do it at home' method is going to take quite a bit of elbow grease.   You will also need a piece of soft cotton, like an old T shirt.  Thirdly you will want to purchase some Liberon 'Ring Remover'.  We sell it here at our shop, or you can get it online.   Take your piece of cotton and make it into a ball that is smooth on one side.  One side will be your handle, the other (smooth side) will be your work surface.  Apply the ring remover to the 'work surface' side of your cotton ball.  Smack it with your hand a few times to spread the product through  the cotton and then start rubbing your water ring.  You want to rub the wet cotton forcefully cross the water mark in the same direction as the wood grain.  This process will take some time, and quite a bit of pressure, but the ring will disappear if you are patient.  Remember, I said the 'do it at home' method is going to take elbow grease!  The heat caused by the friction works with the chemicals in the ring remover to pull the moisture up out of the wood.  Once you are done, the ring will have disappeared.  If you have a shinny spot afterwards,  you can either rub the rest of the table or a coat of wax will even the finish back out.  Just don't do both projects on the same day!  You might not be able to move your arm for a bit and those gifts won't wrap themselves!

If all of this work just makes you want to run and hide behind your pile of yet-to-be-wrapped presents, then bring your project to us!  We have many different ways of dealing with damaged finishes and will find the perfect solution for your waterlogged problem.

Rotten Porch Rail

 This set of porch rails came to us so that the many layers of paint could be stripped off.  Simple job right?  Well, we got the paint of (simple but not easy!)  and discovered a whole new set of problems.  Years and years of water damage left many of the joints rotten.  The paint was so thick it had actually been holding the rails together.  Without the paint, the rotten joints fell apart.

 You can see in this picture how blackened the wood had become.  We ended up needing to rout out all the worst sections and replace them with new sturdy wood splines.  A spline is a piece of wood, usually inserted on the underside of a repair, that will strengthen the wood around it.  You can see one of the splines we did,  in the picture below.

 The spline repairs were put in with epoxy which is the strongest glue we have.  The epoxy soaks into the surrounding wood and is so strong that to get the wood apart it has to be cut.  We also filled all the rotten nail holes with epoxy.  This way we cold re-assemble the piece and the nails would have something to bite into.

The porch rails were re-assembled and while they aren't particularly pretty, they are much sturdier and the repairs we performed should last a very long time.  The owner of this rain is a faux finish expert so she will be taking it home and painting it herself, using exterior quality paints and finishes.  

A Gilded Children's Chair

We do all kinds of large, complecated jobs here at the shop, but we also do little ones fairly often.  This job is not only little, but the furniture is little to!

This gilded chair is just the right size for a child.  We see children's rocking chairs quite frequently but chairs are a bit more rare.

As you can see, the chair came to us in multiple pieces.  Clearly some child had a little to much fun during playtime.  But we used our 'magical' skills and put this chair back together so that another child may have a golden throne to sit on.

Besides the obvious structural damage,  there were several woven strands on the seat which had broken.  We patched these strands and then re-guilded all of the repaired areas on the chair.  It came out very well.  All of the repairs blend in,  and the chair still has and old, well loved appearance.

Table Leaf with Plasticizer Damage

 This leaf belongs to a beautiful table that has suffered 'plasticizer' damage.  You can see from the photo that it has a strange 'oily' appearance in the finish.  This happened because the owner of the table put a plastic 'table cloth' over it to protect it, and then left in on for a while.  

The problem is that most finishes have a plasticizing agent in their chemical composition to keep the finish from becoming brittle and shattering when dry.  When the plastic cover was used on the table there was a chemical reaction and it actually broke down the finish.  This can create either the weird oily looking surface that you see here, or it can actually melt the surface so that you can pick the finish off with our finger nail.

Usually the only way to fix plasticizer damage is to completely strip and refinish the table.  But before we took that step we tried a less extensive procedure, just in case.  In this situation it was enough.  We began by removing the top layers of the table's finish where the damage was.  We then stabilized the finish and top coated it with a new water base topcoat in a 'Matte' sheen.  Our client is very happy with the results and has also learned a little lesson about plastic and chemistry.

 

A Glockenspeil with an Invisible Repair

This is a 'Glockenspeil'  that came into our shop after a chunk of wood was broken off of it's front corner.  The wood was completely gone, all the way down the corner, which presented an interesting challenge for us.   The grain on the face runs vertically while the grain on the sides runs horizontally.  To fix the instrument, we epoxied on a piece of oak that was larger then we needed.  This allowed us to then trim it to a perfect fit.   We then had to do the color matching work, which was the most difficult aspect of this job.

 It is such a challenge because you have so many different factors to deal with.  You have to consider the ambient lighting that you are doing the work in.  Lighting effects how you see color, whether you are outdoors, indoors, have flourecents etc.    You also have to consider that different people see color in different ways, so what may look good to your eye, may stand out like a sore thumb to someone else.  The colors in the wood are also a factor.  Wood is not a solid color,  it has an 'overall color' but that is made up of under tones, highlights, wood grain etc.  There can even be different colors just within the grain pattern!  And finally, you have to consider the finish that has been applied previously.  You don't know what the exact formula they used so you have to make judgement calls about how to mix finish to re-create that.

Add to all those challenges the fact that the wood grain runs two different directions.  So now, on top of all your standard considerations,  one side is going to have to have it's grain pattern painted on by hand.  Regardless of all these challenges,  the job came out beautifully.  Looking at it now, unless you knew it had been broken before, you would never see the repair.   And that is what we aim for, a repair you don't even know is there.

Fabricated Table Braces

I bet you can't guess what the pieces of wood in the above picture are for!   They don't have a useful function, they are purely a decorative piece. Can't guess?  That's ok, I am going to tell you anyway.

They are decorative corner braces for a dining room table.  Our client brought the upper one to us and asked us to make two more, as she was missing a couple.  As simple as this may seem off hand, it is actually a very tricky job.  It requires the use of different router bits, a jig and a 'forstner bit', to exactly re-create the carving from the original.  The 'forester bit' was used to make that circular indentation, it creates an exact circle, while removing the wood as it carves.    Once all that is set, it all has to be reversed to create the carving on the mirror-image corner brace.   

Of course,  that is just the fabrication process.  We haven't begun to talk about the color work necessary to mimic the look of an aged 'original' finish.  As challenging as all those little steps may be,  we have the people here for the job.  As you can see, it came out beautifully.  These corner braces are now on proudly in place on the dining room table,  and no one would ever notice they weren't original.  Now that is a job well done!

A Dresser Repair

 I often feel like we are 'all the king's horses and all the king's men' here at the shop, trying to put together furniture pieces which are completely fallen apart.   This isn't quite as bad as some other pieces we have had (see our 'humpty dumpty posts here and here...)  but it was pretty close.  This dresser was in such bad repair, that we couldn't stand it on it's feet, and when we moved it back into our work area, there were even more seams coming loose.  This was a case of significant glue failure, fortunately we are able to do something about that kind of problem.
We had much better success then the 'kings cavalry' in that famed story.  To begin with, we need to take apart any joints or seams that were loose, we wouldn't want to glue one part, only to have another part collapse!  So once all loose seams were dealt with, we went about the task of re-gluing the entire piece with hide glue.  Hide glue is the oldest know glue that is still in use today.  It was found in items that were buried in the pyramids! We used hide glue on this piece because that is what it was originally glued with.  Hide glue can last pretty much forever, as long as it is kept in indoor conditions.  If it is in high heat or high humidity conditions (such as grandma's attic) the glue will fail.

Restoration of Gilt Mirror Frame

 This beautiful mirror frame came into our shop with considerable damage.  There were large obvious areas,  as well as minor breaks and chips all over.  Someone had clearly attempted to repair it,  and then realized that they just weren't up to the job.  So they brought it to us!  What a wise decision!

I am going to show you a series of photos, each of a different area of significant damage.  In this first photo you can see where a leaf tip had been broken off.  When it came to us, someone had used bondo or putty and had tried to reshape it,  giving it a sort of 'pine cone' look.  That clearly did not match the rest of the mirror.  Our first task, with any of the repairs on this frame, was to create a solid, accurately shaped repair with bondo.   This shaping takes a good eye for what would have originally been there,  as well as good hands to recreate it with tools.

 The next task once all the bondo work and carving was dry and set, was to color the repaired areas.   With older frames, the traditional way of decorating was to apply a red oxide base under the gold leaf.  This red gave the leaf a brightness and brilliance.  Without the bright red color, the gold leaf would have ended up a bit more pale or washed out.  We re-created that by using a liquid shellac and red oxide powders directly over the bondo.






The next step, after the red oxide is to re-create the gold leaf.  Since this mirror used a gilding paste as a 'faux' leaf,  we did the same.  We can recreate any different shade of gold, which is pretty important when restoring old pieces such as this.  The paste was applied by hand over the red.

The final step in the restoration of this mirror was to 'antique' the gilt paste on the areas we repaired.  I would love to tell you more about this step, really I would.  But....  I just can't.  That would be like giving away a secret recipe, or the location of a buried treasure. I just can't do it.  But,  if you think this mirror looks as gorgeous as I do,  you are welcome to bring your mirror in.  We will work all our magic, and even use the secret sauce,  if the job requires it!

Straightening Warped Wood

We have been working on a big Armoire restoration project for a little while now.   It is a very old french piece and one of the side panels has warped to the point that the armoire can't be assembled properly.  So before we move on with the project, we needed to straighten it out.    This process is done while the wood is damp, and so more pliable.  

To straighten the piece out, we laid the side panel down on our low workbench and clamped to long pieces of wood tightly down each side to create a trough.  Then, between these long 'fences'  we placed short pieces of wood horizontally.  We clamped all of this snugly down onto the workbench using several very long clamps.

The side panel will stay like this until it is completely dry.  Then we will take all the clamps off and check to see if it has straightened out.  If it has, then great!  If it has not, then we will have to re-wet the wood and go through the process again.

Just a little educational post today.  I hope you enjoyed it!

A High Chair With a New Life

 This high chair withstood the use of many, many babies, but one reckless teenager falling on it just the wrong way, gave it a trip to our shop.   We began our work by stripping the old aging finish off of the high chair.  Once that finish was removed we could see what repairs needed to be done.

All of the joints needed to be re-glued (that is a lot of joints!)  and even the seams in the seat and back had to be repaired.  We repaired these seams with biscuit joints which are a sturdy but invisible way of fortifying the wood.

Once the high chair was repaired and all the prep-sanding was done, it was time to do the color work.  The color you see on the piece is a 'cognac' stain with a 'semi-gloss' finish.  We also had to do some touchup work by hand to both sides of the chair back.  The touchup blends in so well though that at this point it is almost impossible to detect where it was done.

This high chair is now ready for many more babies and many more 'first bites'.  Lets just hope no more reckless teenagers decide to use it as a landing pad!

New Veneer on a Cedar Chest

 Cedar chests have such a sentimental appeal for me.  They are something that you put cozy winter coats in, store leather baby shoes in, and that vintage dress of grandmother's.  Cedar chests seem to store memories inside.  

This Cedar chest came to us because, while the inside was doing it's job quite well, the outside had fallen into dis-repair.  The veneer was damaged, peeling, and in some places missing.  The finish was old and worn. It was straying dangerously into 'shabby' territory and needed some help coming back to 'beautiful' territory.   We began our work by stripping all of the old, worn out finish off, using our brand-new water based stripping system.   

The next step was to complete the repairs to the chest.   The entire strip of gorgeous walnut burl veneer around the base had to be replaced.  Our craftsman did a great job with that walnut, it turned out beautifully.  There were also damaged areas of veneer on the top surface that had to be secured down, and a large discolored area where the veneer had a stain which we had to hide.  Hiding discoloration is a very tricky task, but it came out looking very good on this particular piece.

Lastly, we applied a beautiful new stain and finish.  The stain on this chest is a water based Pecan with a Satin sheen over the top.  It is really a beautiful color choice for the piece.  Because it is a lighter stain, the colors in the various types of wood are really able to shine through.

I think the outside of the cedar chest is now just as beautiful as the inside, and is now once again ready to house tangible memories for years and years to come.

Restoration of a Chippendale Chair Set

Chippendale is probably one of the most well known furniture makers and we had the pleasure of  working on a set of Chippendale style chairs in our shop.  Actually these two chairs are so old, they may be originals.

As you can see, they came to us in really bad shape.  One was completely in pieces but they both needed to be thoroughly re-glued.  As we have worked on this set of chairs some really interesting things became apparent to us.  These little things such neat historical clues.

The chairs have identical styling, as though they were made by the same furniture house, but they are also subtly different, as though different craftsmen made each one.  Notice how the arms are the same curve, same pattern, but one has a wider flair than the other.  One chair is also a tiny bit taller than the other.  They both have the same shell motif on the front of the seat, but one is carved a little more shallow then the other.  When we put together the way the joints were made,  the tight grain of the mahogany wood (which means it really has to be very old)  and the hand made details,  we begin to see that these are very very old chairs.

With a little bit of digging about the history of Chippendale design, it begins to look as though these are original, late 1700's chairs, probably made in the Chippendale design house itself, and definitely made in England.  English Chippendale furniture was made of Mahogany, whereas American manufacturers generally used Cherry.  Thomas Chippendale also employed 40+ craftsmen who all used the same patterns, but each worked on a piece until completion.  American makers used a more assembly style process which means that the slight variations in this chair have to be from English manufacture.

After we performed the extensive repairs and regluing that these chairs needed,  we prepped them for staining and then our customer came in and chose the stain color herself.  The color she chose, and that you see on these chairs in Dark Pine stain over Mahogany wood which gives a gorgeous rich  red color. After staining with our water based stains,  a glaze was applied so that the intricate carving that Chippendale chairs are known for,  could be fully emphasized.  Now all the chairs need is a new seat and they will be ready to grace the most elegant living room.

It has been such delight to bring these chairs back to life for our customer.  They were her grandmother's chairs and have been in dis-repair for as long as she can remember.  With such a beautiful history,  it is good to have the chairs look beautiful as well.

Biscuit Joint on High Chair Seat

I showed you all pictures of this high chair when it was in 18 pieces, a few posts back.  Well, we are moving forward with the project and are to the point where we need to put the seat back together.  The high chair is made of maple, and the seat is pieced together. The combination of those to factors caused a very common problem.  Maple very frequently looses moisture over time which causes it to shrink.  When the wood shrinks, the joints separate and the seat falls apart.  In addition to the shrinkage problem,  the way these type of seats used to be put together was with a 'butt joint'.  Meaning that it was two flat pieces of wood stuck together with glue.  This isn't a particularly strong type of adhesion method!

To fix the problems with this seat we started out by cleaning any old glue off of the pieces of the seat so that we have a clean work surface.  If this step is skipped, then any new glue could just adhere to the old glue, not to the wood, and the joints would fail again.  We then used what is called a 'Biscuit Joint' to secure the pieces together.  Small grooves were cut in the wood using a 'biscuit jointer'.  This is an exacting job, as the grooves need to be perfectly aligned. A thin oval shaped piece of wood called a 'biscuit' is then glued into one set of grooves.  Once the glue is dry, the same biscuit, attached now to a piece of wood, is glued into the matching set of grooves on the other piece of wood.  This process, if done well, leaves a very tight, sturdy joint that is completely invisible.

Danish 'Wegner' Chair Gets Restored

This is one of a set of 4 danish Wegner chairs (pronounced 'vegner') that came to us recently, needing some help to make them 'sit-able' again.  There were a few loose joints, one of which you can see in this picture.  The top rail has come loose from the back right leg.  So these minor repairs needed to be worked out.

But in addition to the repairs,  every one of the seats needed to be re-woven by hand.  'Danish Cord' was used in an x pattern so that the original style of the chair would kept in tact.

We also cleaned and waxed the chairs with a clear wax, which helped to brighten and protect the finish in the years to come.

With his love of natural materials and his understanding of the need for furniture to be functional as well as beautiful, Hans J. Wegner (1914–) made mid-century Danish design popular on an international scaleWith more than 500 different chair designs Wegner is the most prolific Danish designer to date. His international breakthrough and greatest sales success came in 1949 when he designed the 'Round' chair which was made famous when it was used in the televised Nixon-Kenedy debates.    The 'Y' chair which we have here in our shop was first designed in 1950.

Custom Finish for a Classic Rocking Chair

 This is a classic 70's era rocking chair with a few obvious repairs needed, and a few not so obvious ones.   The most noticeable  repairs were done first, the repair to the break on one of the rockers, and a repair to a break on the opposite arm.  After these were completed,  we stripped the entire rocking chair and then re-evaluated to see what else needed to be done.  We found that every single joint had to be re-glued!  That means we had a pile of 25 pieces, each had to have the old glue cleaned off, and then freshly glued back together with epoxy.

The rocking chair then needed to be sanded with 120, and then sanded again with 180.  All of that work, the repairs and the sanding is just the boring part.  Once that was all completed,  we got to the fun part.  The custom stain color and finish.   We started out with a water based Walnut stain.  Walnut is a greenish brown stain and when it was applied to the particular wood on this rocking chair,  it also had a little bit of a grey quality to it.   This green/brown/grey tone created a base color for our next steps.  We applied a Mahogany toner to the chair which has a vibrant red color.  We applied two coats to the seat and base, and 3 coats to the top and spindles.  This red brightened up the chair and cut out the grey tone.  The result is a reddish brown with a dark greenish undertone which brings out the wood grain much better then a single color of stain would have done.  The rocking chair is now just gorgeous.  The satin sheen finish give the chair a soft quality, the wood is vibrant and the color seems just right.  We had such fun creating this custom color that we are hoping we get to apply this kind of technique again soon.

Glue Joint Failure

Can you guess how many pieces this High Chair is currently in?  I give you a hint....  it's a lot!  Sometimes we get items in where every bit of glue has failed.  This means all the seams in the seat come apart and  all the joints, whether doweled or tenoned or something fancier, come apart.  When this happens, we have to carefully tag each piece so that it isn't a puzzle trying to get it back together.

There are many reasons for glue to fail.  If the furniture was originally put together with Hide Glue, then a change in temperature or moisture in the air, could cause the glue to fail.  Hide Glue is very strong, as long as it is kept in normal indoor conditions.  But it is activated at high heats so if you leave the chair on the porch in the summer, the glue can be activated and then while the joint is soft (and not clamped) it can become loose and fall apart.  

Other joints fail because a bad or experimental glue was used.  In the early 1900's a Lignin glue was used and it has a very high fail rate.  We get furniture in fairly often that originally had this kind of glue used.  Joints can also fail because not enough glue was used to penetrate the surrounding wood fibers. If the chair has had a prior repair attempt, sometimes an in-experienced repairman will not clean the old glue off before applying new.  The glue then just bonds with the old (already failed) glue, instead of to the actual wood.   

Diagnosing why a joint failed can almost seem like diagnosing a medical condition.  It really does help to know the furniture's history.  But regardless of why the joint failed in the first place,  a skilled, experienced repair specialist can put the furniture back together, regardless of how many pieces it is in.  The new bonds they create between the pieces should last well into the future.  When you go into a shop to get your furniture worked on, be sure to ask lots of questions so that you know what your glue options are, what each glue's risks are, and get a good sense that they know what they are doing!

Spline Repair to a Trestle Table

 This elegant trestle table came in with several breaks on the trestle stretchers which not only were unsightly, but made the table much more weak and unstable.

While the elegant curved contour of these particular trestle stretchers is pleasing to the eye,  they have a weak point built in.  Each stretcher curves in such a way that the grain stops running with the piece of wood and instead runs across it.  This point of 'cross grain' is extremely weak and broke on almost every one of these points.

To repair the breaks we turned the table upside down and glued each break with epoxy.  We like to use this type of glue on breaks since it becomes almost indestructible.  The epoxy works it's way into the pores of the wood so that it becomes almost a part of the wood itself.

Once the repairs were set and the glue had cured, we came back and did extra work on those 'cross grain' sections where the structure was so weak.   To fortify these areas, we created a spline on the underside of the stretchers.  You can see the spline repair here, but once the table is back on it's feet, only the carpet will see the spline!   For those of you whom 'spline' is a new word, let me explain.   What we did is cut a groove in the stretcher right across that break.  We then inserted and epoxied into place a sturdy piece of wood, which has grain running the length of the spline, rather then across it.   This piece of wood will strengthen the weak area so that a second break can not occur in the same vicinity.

Work on this table is just about done.  We  still have some work to do on the veneered top but all the structural work is completed.  We think our customer will be thrilled with the results!

Headboard with a Shrinkage Problem

 This beautiful 19th century headboard went through some unfortunate wood shrinkage when it was brought from the moist eastern climate to the more dry western climate.  The center panel shrunk from side to side.  This caused it to fit it's frame vertically but not horizontally.  A prior attempt at a repair was done, whomever did it added a round strip of wooden trim into the seam between the panel and the frame, to try and hide the ill fitting wood.

This really was not a great fix, it hid the problem but did not actually repair it.  So the bed was brought to us for a more permanent restoration job.   What we are in the process of doing is quite a bit more complicated.   We started out by cutting and contouring a piece of wood to fit each side of the center panel.  Since the bed has veneer on both sides,  we had to plane down our new piece of wood so that it would be thin enough to handle two pieces of veneer and still be the correct thickness.  The next step was possibly the trickiest.  Veneer had to be cut to match the angles of the existing veneer on the headboard.   The patch was then glued to the center panel and we will next have to do color touchup so that the pieces  appear to be one.  Once all that is done, the frame can go back on and the work on the headboard will be completed.