Restore, Repair, Refinish. Three very dangerous words. Be very, very careful when you use them.....
When it comes to vintage and antique furniture this is the NUMERO UNO NO NO. Thank goodness I've had the pleasure of being my father's child. Even better, his youngest child. (Not nearly as good as being the oldest, but I'm playing with the cards I was dealt.) Anyway, my Dad was always one of those closet type over-achievers. One of his many loves was working with wood, and I learned a lot from watching or helping him over the years. Unfortunately, I'm now inclined to think I can do anything (whether or not I know how).
Part I
One of the items in my very first storage unit was
a really solid old cedar chest with a ruined outer shell.
The veneering had some nice inlays, but
someone had tried sanding a couple of small areas.
Since this is a piece of furniture I can't sell
and don't care about, it makes a perfect project piece.
 |
I've never tried to refinish damaged veneering. I've been told it "can't be done". |
I intend to find out for myself
if this damaged veneer can be saved.
if this damaged veneer can be saved.
Larry, bless his heart, can never be accused of not wanting to buy stuff. (We like stuff!) In fact, he'll let me spend a pile of money on the materials we need to fix up an object that will never be worth that much. So we promptly went out and bought sandpaper, stain and (my personal favorite) Minwax Tong Oil. Larry's never used tong oil before, and he gives me that look that clearly says, "I doubt your decision, but I'm willing to pay for it." (Oh, yes...I dearly love that particular expression!)
We put the chest on the patio and started sanding.
We played at it for a few days first, taking turns trying out different grits of sandpaper and different methods of using it. We quickly figured out that the old veneering did not have the very fragile surface I had been led to believe, and that the veneer itself was not nearly as thin as I had thought. This meant we could use power tools. Yippee for electric sanders! Also, the clear-coat on the surface was way tougher than we had expected. We needed some rougher grit to cut through the clear-coat, but not too large a grain on the grit. We didn't want to risk any sanding gouges. I tried a P60 grit on my palm sander, which was pretty safe for the inlay work, but wasn't really cutting through much.
The surface of the lid immediately began to show
hairline cracks going deep into the veneer itself.
I could see that unless we sanded all the way down beneath the depth of the cracks, then the stain would visually enhance them. This could be a major problem.
Larry, who enjoys buying things almost as much as he enjoys playing with the stuff he buys, attacked the top of the chest with a belt sander and a slightly rougher grit. This was the perfect solution, and I was suitably impressed. He managed to cut through the clear-coat and the stain, and even made some progress on those deep fissures I was worried about. But the belt sander left a few rough spots of its own, so I switched back to the palm sander to smooth them out. The P60 grit was probably best for the front of the chest, but it still wasn't going to do the job on the outer surface of the lid, which had some fairly deep scars that could still be seen if I looked really close. So I switched to a "medium" grit from an assorted pack I found in the garage, worked down through the deepest scratches, then went back to the P60 later.
so we can get into the corners.
And I was hoping we wouldn't have to do that. (Big sigh here.) The pieces were tacked on with finishing nails and had not been glued. That was a blessing. Many of the nails had already become pulled loose, and that was a blessing, too. Larry began carefully removing only the pieces in his way. I hadn't planned on having to reconstruct the entire chest, but prior experience did teach me to assume this was only the beginning.
I mark each and every piece as it comes off
so it can be put back in the right spot.
Some pieces have to go back on
in the right direction or correct order.
I use a Sharpie marker, and always write
where it won't be sanded off and won't show later.
About this time Larry begins to realize that he has spent more on just the sandpaper than what this old chest is worth, and he begins to question the wisdom of this effort. He tends to miss the pleasure of the journey itself unless I point it out to him. I tell him this is supposed to be a learning experience. And everyone knows a good education never comes cheap. I also explain that if we can refinish the damaged pieces we get stuck with, maybe we can get rid of them.
(We consider furniture and appliances to be way far behind mattresses in terms of things we really don't want to have to pull out of a storage unit, but they are still pretty high on the list. It seems nothing is as undesirable as mattresses. I usually look at the quality of any wood furniture I can see when I'm trying to decide if I even want to bid on a unit. Good wood often provides insight to the quality of the other items in the unit. Larry sees it only as the weight that will have to be moved out if we buy it.)
Finally, I say that if I damage this piece trying to restore it, at least there will be nothing lost. And I leave him sitting there, still trying to calculate the gain.
