Elegant Little Side Table

 This may seem at first like just a simple little side table, perfect for hiding your tv remote.  And, with just an ordinary stain and finish, it could have stayed an ordinary little side table.  But, when it came time to choose the stain color, our client chose an elegant dark finish called 'Jacobean'.  It is an almost black color with a hint of red.    In the bright morning light that we took the 'finished' photo in, you can really see that red stand out.  Pair the elegant stain color choice with a lovely satin finish and your simple little side table turns into an elegant eye catcher!  Now this table with it's lovely turned legs isn't just for hiding things, it is for standing out in a crowd.  What a difference the finish makes.

Chair for Upholstery

Before, During, After

It can be difficult to see just how beautiful the 'before and after' photos are, when a chair is missing it's upholstery.  But let's give it a try.   This lovely old 'shield back' chair came to us after the upholsterer had stripped it down to the frame.  This step is important because we can not work with the chair if there are still shards of padding hanging on.  We need to be able to access the wood without any hinderance.    Once the upholstery is stripped off and the chair is brought to us, we strip of the finish with our water based stripper.  It goes through three different liquid processes to get that wood sparkly clean.  

After this, any repairs can be done.  It is important to get those repairs done while there is no cloth on the chair.  With the cloth on, the joints become covered and impossible to reach.  After the repairs it is time to prep sand the chair and apply the stain and finish.  For this chair, our client chose an English Oak stain with a Dark Pine toner.   This color combination is going to look very nice with the golden blond colored upholstery she has chosen.  Now that our work is completed,  it goes back to the Upholsterer for the final step.

Oak Mission Style Desk

This beautiful oak mission style desk came to us for restoration and water damage removal.  As you can see from the photo below, the top surface has a significant amount of water damage.  The white haze appears when moisture penetrates  the

finish but does not get all the way down to the wood.  We started out by using a 'no blush' product which can sometimes fix this problem with just the spritz from a can.  We then sprayed the entire desk with a 'dark pine' water based stain.  This really helped freshen up the overall apearance of the desk.

We also applied a 'retarder' product which eliminated the remaining moisture damage.  Over the retarder we gave the desk two new layers of finish in a lovely 'satin' sheen.  As you can see, the desk looks much better.

 It has a new brighter appearance and the moisture damage is almost completely gone.  This process doesn't always work to remove water damage. Sometimes more labor intensive approaches need to be taken and sometimes the whole piece actually has to be stripped and refinished.  But in this case, we are very happy with the result of our method!

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.

 

'Touch & Top' Job For an Old Finish

I know I just put up a post about a coffee table, but this is a completely different kind of job,  so bear with me on this.

This time we didn't strip and refinish the coffee table, but instead performed a 'touch and top' job.  This means we went in and touched up all the scrapes and scars by hand.  This is the kind of work that needs an artist, someone who can match and blend color and grain patterns so that the touchup repair disappears.

After the touchup work was done, we top-coated with a clear water based finish that will protect not just our repairs, but the rest of the finish as well.  This top coat gives a new lustrous sheen to the coffee table and almost looks like we refinished it.

If you have something lying around your house that is showing some ware and tear, but you don't want to change the color/finish, we can still make it look a lot better for you by performing similar work.  Bring that piece in to us and we can go over your options.

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.

1930's Dining Table

 We just completed work on a stunning 1930s dinning room table and buffet server.  We only worked on the top surfaces, as they were the parts that had become worn and marred with age.  We took the finish off so that we had bare wood to work with.  It was then sanded and and prepped.  This time our 'prepping' required some extra work because our client really wanted the smoothest appearance possible for their pieces.  We used a purplish 'pore filler'  which goes on like putty and then has to be sanded off.  This filler makes the surface really smooth and hides the porosity that is a normal wood characteristic.

We used a 'natural' tone stain on this table, which means all that gorgeous color is from the Mahogany wood itself.  No dyes on this table!  Over that stain we applied a 'semi-gloss' sheen finish.  This finish was then hand polished to bring up the shine.   The hand polishing + the pore filling gave this table a very high shine. It is almost reflective.

The photo below really shows off that 'reflective' quality of the table's new finish.  I can't help but imagine the elegant dinner parties of old that were centered around this dinning table.  It is now in beautiful enough condition again that hopefully it will host many more festive soirees.

African Padouk Coffee Table

Check out the exotic wood on this coffee table!  Have you ever seen such a vibrant red/pink?  It is a rare african wood called Padouk and that is it's natural color!  No dyes or stains were used to achieve this appearance.  When freshly cut, it is a very bright red, but when exposed to sunlight it fades over time to a warm brown.  It is native to central and tropical africa.  It can grow hundreds of feet tall.  Localy, it is used to make canoes and sculptures and furniture.  Due to it's resonant quality it has become popular for western instruments, such as guitars.   It has a bright red sap which is used as a dye for red cloth. The leaves are used in herbal medicines to heal various skin problems such as parasites and fungal infections.  Seems like a pretty diversely used wood to me!

Padouk has quite an interesting history of use, ranging from Biblical Kings to Rail cars.  For more of it's story, check out this link... http://www.woodmagazine.com/materials-guide/lumber/wood-species-3/padauk/

This coffee table came to us with an ugly faded finish on it.  The underside was still beautiful, but the surface had clearly faded from the sun.  We are looking forward to choosing stain colors and finish types with our clients.  A natural stain would really allow than exotic color to shine through, but they may choose to tone it down a bit with a brownish stain.  We shall see!   And I will let you all know how the project ends up looking.

A Bridal Cedar Chest

This beauty is actually a project that our Finisher completed for his future bride. Such a romantic and old-fashioned gesture.  Just like this Cedar Chest.  The first step on this project was of course to strip the old worn out finish off.  After that was done, our Finisher could actually see what was going on with the wood underneath.   It turns out that the beautifully 'book and butt' matched Walnut veneer on the top was cracked, chipped and flaking off so badly that he needed to replace it all.   But he is a finisher, not a veneer master, so he went with one piece of really spectacularly marbled walnut veneer instead.  He did a terrific job and it came out beautifully with not a bubble anywhere to be found, and matched the walnut veneer on the face perfectly.

Besides the veneer repair, the other really interesting and unique thing he did to the chest was in the finish itself.  Which makes sense, since this is his area of expertise!   He actually used two different custom stains, one for the walnut veneer, and one for the rest of the wood.  The Walnut veneer received a mix of Dark Pine and Jacobean.  Jacobean is a very dark, almost black shade.  The rest of the cedar chest (legs, trim, etc) received a mix of  Dark Pine and Natural.

After all that stain was applied,  Our Finisher took some extra steps to make this cedar chest even more exotic.  Using a gold gilding paste, he accented the spiral shaped trim on the face,  all of the medallions, the hollows on the legs, and the trim all the way around the lid.  He didn't want a bright, stark gold look though, so over the gold gilding paste he used a Dark Brown Glaze, which almost 'antiqued' the gold.   Over all of this,  the custom stains,  the gilding paste, and the glaze,  he applied a water based Semi-Gloss sheen finish.   The cedar chest now looks like a beautiful jewel,  very appropriate as a gift for his future bride.  

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.

A New Life for an Old Dresser

 This chest of drawers came to us years ago so that we could strip it.  The customer wanted to do the finish work on it, so it left our shop clean and ready for sanding, and staining.  After realizing recently that they just weren't getting to the project, they brought it back to us to complete the work we started.

First off, there were some repairs that needed to be done,  new drawer bottoms to be cut, a few areas patched where the wood was missing, and the top needed some bleaching.  There were also some gouges that needed to be steamed out.

Then the fun began, color time!  The customer came in and we put a few different stain color samples on the wood.  We like to do this so that they get a really good idea of what their piece will look like when it is completed.  Stains can look different on different woods, so looking at a chart on the wall isn't very helpful, it is better to see the stain on the actual wood it will be on. She chose a beautiful Cognac stain with a Satin sheen finish.  The piece has new hardware and looks beautiful now that the work is done.  One of the things I really love about this piece is that it's owners decided to leave some of it's imperfections visible.  There are scratches visible under the finish, some spots where the wood has darkened, and an old burn mark about the size of a dime on one of the top corners.    The work we did made it beautiful again, but without removing it's visible history.

Fancy Marquetry Table gets a Touchup

 This home made marquetry table came to us because the veneer  on the top was damaged and peeling. We stripped the table and then went to work re-gluing the raised areas and cutting new pieces where the veneer had to be replaced all together.

All the veneer repairs have been completed, but there were still flaws in the marquetry all over the place and these had to be corrected with touchup.  Some of the flaws were simply because the wood was not the same age, and so hadn't darkened with time,  and some of them were from the original veneer that had tiny little breaks and nicks.
Our color wizard chose 3 different pigment powders from his collection to create this mustardy yellow.  He used White, Green, Canary Yellow and Pine.  This is the mixture for just one of the colors he had to use, each different wood type he touched up on this piece needed it's own special custom blend.

This table top uses many different kinds of woods including Birds Eye Maple, Rosewood, Lacewood, Elm and Ebony.  The colors he chose, along with his expert fine gran strokes, blended perfectly with each wood he was working on.  The table top looks beautiful and is ready for it's final step,  a coat of orange Shellac over the entire table.  

Classic Hitchcock Chairs get a Touchup

These beautiful  'Hitchcock' style chairs have received much loving use over the years.  As a result the black paint on the arm and top rails has worn off from handling, and there are 'table rub' marks on the spindles of the side chairs.  To repair these chairs, we went to our color touchup man with the magic fingers.  All the worn areas needed some delicate sanding with very fine grit paper to finesse the contours and make sure the new color could easily blend with the old.  They then received new color to the worn areas and a clear top coat.

The chairs now look good as new.  You would  never know that they had been worn looking.  Our guy in the shop did a great job.

Hitchcock chairs have been around for quite some time and they are still very similar to what they looked like originally.  In 1818 Lambert Hitchcock started the Hitchcock Chair Company, his vision was to create beautiful affordable mass produced chairs.  They also used a relatively new idea,  instead of hand painting a design on the back of each chair,  he used the easier technique of stenciling.  This stenciling gives the Hitchcock chair a unique and very distinguishable look.  By 1820 his company was producing over 15,000 chairs a year!  

While the Hitchcock Chair Company has changed hands a few times,  the company is still in existence and are still making this beautiful classic design.  

Fabricating a Carved Settee Leg

 From time to time we have something come to us that not only has a broken leg, but the broken off part is completely gone!  Now usually we like to put any broken off parts back onto the piece, as then the wood is all the same age, and it will continue to age at the same pace as the rest of the item of furniture.  But, in a situation like this, where the broken off piece is completely gone,  we have to start from scratch and do our best to choose wood that will blend with the rest of the piece.

 In this case,  we had a beautiful Settee come in with one of  the more decorative front legs broken off.  The Settee is made out of mahogany so we put together some small pieces of matching mahogany and attached
them to the leg, as you can see in the first picture.   You can see in the second picture that we have taken some of the excess wood off and have drilled holes along the inside curve of the leg to make hand carving a bit easier.  Next a template of the leg shape was attached to the leg, for more refined removal of excess wood.  You can see in the 4th picture that all the excess wood has been removed and the fine shaping is ready to begin.
 The leg carving turned out very well.  It looks almost exactly like the other two on the settee.   Now it is off  to the finishing department.  It is their job to make the epoxy line disappear and of course to stain and finish the entire settee.  It is not particularly often that we have to do this kind of work, but fortunately we have the guys with the skill to pull it off.   Do you have a job you think is impossible?   Bring it to us, clearly this job was not enough of a challenge, so your impossible repair might be just the challenge they need!

Custom Cut Dowels

I just wanted to show you one more way that craftsmen here at our shop go above and beyond to do the best repair work they possibly can.  We are currently working on repairing an antique settee which had to be completely taken apart, then put back together.  Each of these joints had dowels holding it together.  Now most shops will to one of two things, they will either re-use the old, often worn out dowel, or use a standard, pre-cut,  2" dowel for all the holes, just like those in the first image. Now these may seem to you like perfectly reasonable ways fix a loose or broken joint, so let me explain to you why we like to do things a little differently.

First off, we like to use a maple dowel which is much harder and therefore much stronger than a standard pre-cut dowel which can be made out of any number of woods. When you are not sure what wood the dowel is made out of, it is tough to know how strong it will be.  Using a maple dowel is going to allow the dowel to withstand much more abuse without breaking.

We also measure each dowel opening on the piece we are repairing and then custom cut the dowels to fill the maximum amount of that opening.  This way we do not end up with hollow areas in the joint, which is the biggest problem with pre-cut dowels.  As you can see in the photo above, we have cut dowels into all different lengths, some quite a bit longer than others.  Imagine if holes which go with those longer dowel pieces were filled with a standard shorter 2" dowel instead.  There would be gaps in the wood which would cause the entire joint to be weaker.

Custom measuring and cutting dowels is definitely an extra step which can bee seen as a bit of a hassle.  But the extra work is so worth it when you consider the structural strength that is gained with a perfectly fitted dowel.  

Rocking Chair with Carved Back Panel

 We recently had this rocking chair come in to our shop for repairs.  One of the stretchers had broken which in turn caused the one of the rockers to break off as well.  While this kind of thing happens fairly often, and we get broken rocking chairs in all the time,  this particular rocker has such interesting styling, that I became very curious about it's origins.  Now, you all get to see what information I have found out about this piece.

The first thing to note, is that there is a very unique sticker on the underside of the seat.  Most antique furniture has no markings by the maker, they simply relied on us recognizing their unique style.  But this chair gives us a very good clue to it's age and maker via the sticker.  You see, around the beginning of the 1900's through the 1940's  Grand Rapids Michigan had a furniture making Heyday.  So the sticker on this Rocking Chair tells us that the chair was made in the early part of the last century.

What really drew me to this rocker originally, was the carving on the back.  I had never seen something like it until this Rocking Chair came in.  The figure on the back seems to be a Spanish Explorer,  and from comparing images,  it is most likely Cortez or Ponce de Leon.  The seat is also round with little notches carved out giving in a drum like look.  In trying to get a better idea of the age of this chair, I found several similar chairs, each with an oval or square carved back and almost all with a round seat and all being given an age at about 1900.  This one seems to have the most intricate carving on the  spindles, stretchers and legs though.  Below are some examples of the other chairs I found. 

Pretty neat right?  I would love to find more designs from the era, but to be honest, I have to say, the carving on the rocker in our shop is still my favorite.

If anyone can tell me anything about the armor that is demonstrated in the carving on the rocker in our shop, I would love to hear about it!  While the helmet looks like Cortez,  the square collar is unlike anything I have been able to find thus far.

Teething Dog Vs. Antique Rocker

This platform rocking chair just came in to our shop, after having been the object of a teething dog's attention.  This is just one section of the damaged area.  There are scrapes and gouges all over the base of  this lovely old rocker which would usually cause the owner of a piece damaged like this, to throw up their hands in tearful frustration and then put the chair in some corner or Attic out of the way.

Fortunately the savvy owner of  this rocker brought it to us.  We have done work like this before and will be able to fix it up beautifully.  As you can see, this buffet leg had  similar damage, when it was attacked  by a hungry household pet.  We had more than one option as far as how to fix it, but the owner of the piece chose to have us make a new leg.  You would never know it had been so badly damaged would you?