Antique Desk Restoration. You won't believe the difference! Furniture Restoration Project.

what have I gotten myself into this restoration is definitely going to be a [Music] challenge when I saw this desk at the thrift store I knew I was going to buy it you just don't come across very unique pieces like this very often [Music] it was all solid wood and it had some really cool details to [Music] it the drawer was in pretty rough shape so I'm going to take it all apart and sand everything down down it looks like somebody took a piece of gum and tried to hold it together at one point when you open up the top it exposes the interior with little cubby holes in the back and then this kind of neat little writing surface that pulls out a lot of times with older pieces you'll find things that have fallen behind drawers or been tucked away I found this little photograph that was on top of the little Cubbies here and this explains why there was so much dog hair in the dresser itself I'm just going to begin by removing everything that had been stuck to the top and then I will start disassembling the desk and removing all of the hardware [Music] the cubby holes here were only held on by that little piece of trim board on either side and so once I removed those it slid right out and lo and behold there were a couple more Treasures the first was this uh lottery ticket it was a scratcher and unfortunately it's not worth a billion dollars and then and just an old [Music] receipt I thought that the top here was just glued on so I was just scoring the edge here and then I was just going to gently pry it off without trying to damage anything and I was really struggling with this I couldn't figure out why it wasn't coming off and finally I figured it out [Music] [Music] so there were screws that were in the bottom portion that stuck out and were recessed into the top portion and glued in so luckily I got the top off and didn't damage anything but I've never seen anything like this before like I said earlier the drawer was in pretty rough shape it was kind of falling apart um and it still makes me laugh that somebody tried to use a piece of gum to hold that together every piece was numbered I'm sure in the manufacturing process it made it a lot easier for them to put these pieces together I also find the handwritten notes very interesting as well so I leave those the Finish was very thin so instead of scraping the flat pieces I just decided to go ahead and sand them and I'm using my typical system of 80 grit 120 and then [Music] 220 [Music] on the underside of the writing surface there was this little block of wood that was screwed on to keep that surface from pulling all the way out so it just stops halfway so I needed to remove that and then also there were some Thumbtack pins and some rubber stoppers just to buffer that wood as it slides in in and [Music] [Music] out [Music] [Music] [Music] and now the gum is [Music] gone I'm sanding down all of the parts of the drawer including the inside of the bottom because it was in pretty bad shape and it's still not perfect but it's 100% better than what it was the details on the front of the drawer I sanded by [Music] hand [Music] sanding down the base of this desk was a breeze but the legs were another [Music] story for the larger portions of the legs I used my carbide [Music] scraper for the smaller curved sections on the legs I decided to give stripper a shot just to remove some of that finish I also used it on the details of the front of the desk after the stripper had sat for about 15 minutes I took a little wire brush and just started scraping at that just to to try to get some of that finish [Music] off next I use some mineral spirits just to neutralize That stripper and took some steel wool to get a lot more of that finish off I was able to sand the larger portions for the most part with my orbital sander the finer details are left to sandpaper sanding sponges and scrapers so full disclosure it took me hours and hours to get those four legs to where I was happy with [Music] them [Music] I wanted the legs and the details to be a little bit darker than the base of the desk and so I am using a veranee English chestnut color stain it's one of my favorites I use it a lot it's just kind of a medium brown and it always just turns out really [Music] great [Music] I wanted the base of the desk to look a little lighter and so I chose this early American again another one of my [Music] favorites after I had finished sanding I realized that the two top pieces were a different type of wood than the whole rest of the piece the two top pieces were mahogany and don't get me wrong mahogany is a beautiful wood but it does have a distinct kind of redish tone to it that just wasn't going to work with the color scheme I had in mind so I had to come up with a plan so I started by putting a base coat of the English Chestnut on it and there you can see on that one board the holes that those screws were recessed into after it had dried I set the pieces on the desk and it was still on the red side which I did not care for so I decided to put a layer of espresso on top of that English Chestnut just to darken that down and get rid of that red tone I did end up going over it again with the espresso just to give it an even darker [Music] tone time to reassemble the [Music] drawer [Music] once it was all glued I clamped it all up and then clamped it down to my workbench just to make sure that it's all nice and square I'm using this Minwax uh spray on lacquer for this piece I think it would be closer to what it was On It originally and there are pros and cons the pros are that it uh applies super easy and it gives a really even finish it also gives a really nice soft look softer than just poing the cons are that it is very smelly you needed use it in a well ventilated area and the biggest one is that is it is expensive I used two cans on this and each can was about $15 I did do three coats on this piece before I put it back together I'm just cleaning the hinges here with some barkeeper [Music] friends [Music] before I put it all back together I am just taking a crumpled up piece of a brown paper bag and I'm wiping the whole piece down so what this is going to do is it's going to take care of any dust nibs that may have flown on there while I was lacquering the piece but it will not [Music] scratch I'm putting the screws back in that hold that top [Music] secure [Music] and I'm putting glue down for the back half of the [Music] top [Music] [Music] the towel is going to protect the wood while I clamp that top down down to the base until that glue [Music] dries the hinges go back on and then the piece gets [Music] reassembled if you're enjoying this video just make sure you hit the like And subscribe buttons down [Music] below [Music] I need to install the little trim pieces that hold the cubby holes in [Music] [Music] place [Music] the little block of wood on the back of the writing surface goes by on as well as the buffers that protect that piece of wood while it slides in and out [Music] [Music] [Music] now it's time to show you the dramatic transformation of this beautiful antique desk [Music] [Music] [Music]

Channel: Furniture Shuffle

Views: 58,463

Keywords: Furniture Flip, Upcycled furniture, refinished furniture, Diy, Diy furniture makeover, furniture restoration, furniture painting, furniture makeover, furniture flip DIY, furniture flips before and after, furniture flipping videos, furniture flip ideas, trash to treasure, vintage furniture makeover, vintage furniture transformation

Id: n1uYKSIHd34

Length: 22min 43sec (1363 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 14 2023