A while back Alyson reached out to me about doing a family heirloom from her husband's side of the family. Apparently she saw some of my work and liked my style and thought I would be a good fit for this piece.
We chatted back and forth through texting and then the pics came. Right off the bat I knew this piece was very old and needed A LOT of work.
I figured a phone call was needed to discuss in detail. Once speaking to Alyson and Doug I could hear how important this piece was to Doug. This piece was built many decades ago and past down generations. At one point Doug's mother started sanding the piece to restain but never finished. After the call we decided I should drop by and paint a few sections in Ash and Coal Black from MFP to see which they preferred. I also stained a section in Dark Walnut so they could see how the colours worked together.
Eventually I made my way out and saw the piece in person and to be honest was a bit overwhelmed at the amount of work needed to restore the piece. This was clearly a "restore" as the refinish was minor in comparison.
The cabinet had only 3 functioning castor wheels, sheets of glass were missing, others chipped and cracked. Wood was bowed, pieces were crooked and all the hardware was in pieces in a ziplock bag. The bottom drawer had no base, panels were separating...
After all of this I disclosed the amount of work needed and got a better idea of their expectations. Since the amount of work was far more extensive then originally thought I gave them a range for a quote and they accepted.
Weeks later Doug and his son brought the cabinet to the house and unfortunately new challenges arose. All this said, Doug was confident in my ability and knew it would be a challenge knowing they wanted to keep it as original as possible.
Step by step I worked away at this piece. Lots of gluing and clamping involved to tighten and straighten things up. The single pane glass was a challenge to clean all the dirt and varnish off since it was fragile. After a thorough cleaning, A LOT of sanding was required.
Since the back of the cabinet was made from several panels of wood I attempted to tighten everything up with screws to minimize constant shifting and movement. It was done strategically and successfully.
After the sanding, 3 coats of Coal Black paint was applied while I stained the back panel of both sections with doors to create depth. After the stain dried, 2 costs of Tung Oil was applied. I decided to stain the doors on the 2 drawers as well to add character.
After scraping the felt off the top drawer I repositioned the wood base and straightened it out.
The base on the bottom drawer was in shambles and needed to be rebuilt with new wood.
I reached out to Alyson to see what she wanted to do with the hardware and I mentioned either cleaning it up with steel wool or painting it in bronze gold paint. After cleaning the hardware, the 2 bottom pieces were silver with a finish that disintegrated while cleaning. This lead to the hardware getting painted.
The display part of the cabinet has 3 shelves that were cleaned, sanded and painted black. New hardware was needed as there was only 3 pins to hold the shelving in place.
One of the bigger challenges was replacing the broken glass on the left side of the piece. Initially we agreed on putting wood in but once the piece started coming together I said no to the idea. I had some plexi-glass lying around from a motorcycle windshield I made so I measured it, cut it out, fit it and added some trim and damn it looks good.
Last step was to add a topcoat to the paint.
This piece was one of the more challenging to date due to the condition it was in when I got it. Knowing it was built MANY decades ago, past on from generation to generation and survived a boat ride from Ireland to get here, it was expected that it saw better days.
I hope Doug and Alyson appreciate the current state of the piece as I did my best to keep it as original as possible.
On to the next project.
@renew_and_restorations
@renew_and_restorations
@renew_and_restorations
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