1950's Telephone Bench RESTORATION - Weaving a New Seat For YouTubes Biggest MCM Challenge

today's project is a mid-century telephone bench it dates from the 1950s to the 1960s and as you can see at some point over the last 60 to 70 years it's had a bit of a rough time it looks as though the phone shelf was perhaps used as a pot plant stand and water has overflowed down onto the base although I do think my biggest obstacle is going to be this weave it has a combo of broken missing and incorrectly placed strings what am I going to do with it well only time will tell this restoration is actually part of a YouTube challenge and it's called YouTube's biggest MCM challenge a bunch of talented and awesome channels have been working really hard on many different MCM pieces and we've all launched our videos at the same time you'll find that playlist in my description there's also a a good chance that's how you found this video either way please be sure to check them all out it's certainly a binge worthy MCM playlist and we all really appreciate you tuning in as I dismantle this telephone bench I am realizing that it's really only held together by a few bolts as the glue is no longer adhesive so it's coming apart quite easily but I'm very aware this will likely be the easiest part of this restoration so I'm very careful not to be led into a false sense of security you can see the weave has a lot of broken strings and there are a few stains that look quite permanent there are also these random strings that appear to be threaded incorrectly I'm no weave expert and to be honest I'm finding the thought of having to reweave this very very daunting but I can't imagine trying to repair it without making it look worse than it is now before I get scissors happy I need to count the strings that make up the wave pattern so I can attempt to duplicate it I also take a bunch of photos to refer back to because once it's gone it is gone I just take one last look to ensure I'm making the right choice and cutting it off but the more I look the more problems I find so it's got to go wish me [Applause] luck for it's now time to make a start on tackling this blue stain there's obviously some liquid staining and the colors may be from a chemical reaction with the wood I'm not too sure it doesn't look like paint but I can tell it goes very very deep into the wood I start with some stripper to remove any varnish that's left but the stripper isn't going to cut it so I go and buy some stripper which dissolves the varnish rather than stripping it they recommend using steel wall to remove the varnish residue and then mineral spirits to clean it off I can tell this is working better than the other one so I wipe it off with some mineral spirits and once it's dry I get to work with some oxyc [Music] acid and again I let that dry and then I wash it down with some water and put it aside until I get my hands on some bleach because I'm going to try that as well it's now dark out my wife is on a work call so I am keeping an eye on our Sleeping Sun and taking advantage of some time in the workshop and eating soda twist haribo's finest in my opinion let's start stripping I make a quick stop to get some household bleach onto the stain I'm confident it's not going to get much lighter but it's not going to make it any worse so I'll give it a try I also use it on this Mark while I'm at it now I'm just using a combo of steel wool and a scraper to remove the stripper [Music] [Laughter] it is really important to remove any leftover stripper with some mineral spirits before sanding otherwise you'll annihilate your sandpaper very quickly it's now a new day which happens to be sanding day quite possibly the longest day of a Furniture Resto life fortunately it will only take up one minute of yours [Music] [Music] that was the longest minute of your life wasn't it I opt for a dark chocolate colored stain I think it would be a great contrast with the seat weaving and I think it'll also give it a sharp Sleek look as predicted the stain isn't shifting any further so I'm just going to stain it now I'll then use a bunch of furniture crayons to try and blend it in as much as I can before applying a semi gloss poly spray I give everything about three light coats it dries very quickly so I got it all done in about 1 and 1 half hours d and now what you have all been waiting for it's now time to weave the seat I ordered two Hanks of number two seagrass from Amazon this is a piece from the original weave be I'd say it's marginally thinner so maybe it's a one but close enough and this is called a rush shuttle you load your grass onto it and use it to weave I whipped this one up with my laser using some scrap board that I had and these are hog ring pliers they are used to put your hog rings onto the seagrass when you need to join two pieces of grass together a pair of gloves to protect your hands these ones came with these pliers so that was handy this is a spacer just has to be 1 in across this helps keep the gap for weaving as it gets quite tight as you go along oh and more importantly this bottle of wine today is my four-year wedding anniversary and my wife agreed to a weaving date so yes I am very very lucky all right I think we are all set to go nope one more thing now we have here is my wife and her pajamas about to load up the rush shutle with the seagrass after doing this we actually realized it won't work with this piece as one side has slats next to the bar and it won't fit through so we just have to Loop it through by hand okay we use a piece of string to secure the start of the grass don't do this get a clamp I just didn't happen to have one it's probably a good time to say this is not a professional tutorial I'm just giving you some insights into what we did we actually followed a great tutorial on YouTube it was fantastic I'll leave a link in the description um it's really good for a weave like this one I make sure that I keep referring back to the photos I took of the original weave so we know how many Loops for each section it takes a bit to get used to but eventually you do get a bit of a rhythm going now we ran out of seagrass and needed to connect some more here's a little demo on how I did that you want to make sure that your join is underneath the seat not on top and once you've laid out your first two sections which are different to to each other one goes the full span of the seat and the other just wraps around the rail you just keep repeating that pattern until you reach the end of this side the next part is essentially the same but you have to weave Under and Over and Alternate between sections going over first and under first you flip the seat in between each string that might sound confusing yes yes it is but once you get your rhythm going it does become a little bit easier but only after you make a few mistakes yeah this is me undoing a 30 minute mistake what you are seeing here is what we did for a further 2 hours before it was finished it took us Solid 4 hours with two people our wine glasses were still full at the end we didn't eat dinner and we may not have a fifth winning anniversary no I'm only kidding we did have a couple of swigs of wine here is our chief testing and inspections officer does it cut the mustard Sunny woohoo that looks like a yes a massive thank you for watching please do check out all of the other videos in the YouTube's biggest MCM challenge they absolutely all worth a watch if you would like to see more of this kind of content please hit subscribe it's free if you liked this video a like would go a long way as well now let's check out the finished piece let me know what you think in the comments and until next time take it [Music] [Music] easy [Music]

Channel: Flip It Nation

Views: 137,757

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Id: Wnis0XqoDvQ

Length: 20min 4sec (1204 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 25 2024