Cabinet Transformation! Antique washstand repaired, stripped, and painted

hey guys it's turn at john's furniture repair thanks for joining me again starting a new project here uh it's a little wash stand that i've got here and uh the customer is wanting to change a few things about it and also take it to this color so basically what we're going to do is prep the whole thing and this color is actually a paint with a glaze so i'm going to get a base color paint on the whole thing and then do a black glaze over top i think it'll be um a nice look for this piece they're just looking to update it to keep it in the family and i always appreciate when people do that so thumbs up so the the changes that we're making we've got new hardware we've got some really beautiful old hand carved handles but they're just too ornate for what they're going for in their home and they want more of a mission style look they've also on the bottom had a little porcelain knob very classic but not what they're going for so the customer has ordered uh some nice hardware here it'll look really good you just get one of the bags for you you can see what it is it's kind of going in a more kind of mission style piece that's like a hammered steel black steel kind of look for the drawers and then for the doors or the yeah the doors um we've got like a little hanger type piece so that'll look good i think definitely with this uh color it'll really update the piece i think that'll look really good all right and so the other thing that we're doing to this piece is uh removing these handles on the side because they they said they just don't need them and they're a little bit too ornate bringing the piece a little bit away from what they want and then this piece here um we're taking down all of this ornate stuff and we're actually going to be cutting it to just having a simple backboard instead of one that's got all the uh crazy stuff going on so i mean this might be sacrilegious to some people but like i said before if someone can use what they have something that's uh in their family and they want to change it to make it work in their house i think that's awesome i think keeping these things around uh and making them work for your space is the best possible solution for a lot of these antiques that just don't match your home decor these days so i'm happy to do that for for people so what i'm gonna do is just get everything taken apart get all the hardware off and uh starts prep sanding it for uh paints um for painting all right let's get it [Music] [Music] do [Music] this is when he going to hopefully soften the school these are really hard to get out they have these blocks behind them that were glued in here behind this little panel so it's really hard to knock it off from the other side i was able to do it on the other side of this side so this front block just came off that way i could get this block off up here which is holding on half of it and then hopefully pop this out here but i can't really hit this too much because this is barely anything here either so if this is really glued on here it'll just break this whole piece off as well so i'm hoping that the heat will help just going to give it two minutes on the joint here and then see if i can get some movement if this doesn't work then what i'll do is drill into this piece it out so that i can break the down off of the glue joint inside and then i'll just have to replace the dowel before i give it back to them there we go good a little bit of heat never hurt anybody so that's good there this cracked when i took off the other side so i'll just get a little bit of glue in there and repair that but those are both off now uh the drawer slides inside are pretty worn so i'll probably replace those they go up here drawer slides against them same thing with this side i'll replace that as well the middle one seems to be fine still the interior the shelves not really great so i might put something a little bit more substantial in there just to give it a little bit more beefy the beefy look and i made this joint isn't great here either you can see a big gap here and i'm wondering if it's just this piece at the corner if i just take this whole piece off and re-glue this area because i don't like the gaps that i've seen that came off terribly okay here's the last little bit of that piece that you would like on the other side clean that up yeah it looks like just this piece behind it here has flared out so i need to get this piece back in on this joint and then when i put this piece back on it should be closed up here too so i'll have to take that off it's fun that they'd have two pieces here like that let's see if i can just get that off all the way deal with that joint properly this entire board is broken in here now that i'm working with this oh we're getting into a can of worms with this piece okay so there's a nail that goes through here and here and then one that goes through here so that's why it's becoming an issue i think i'm gonna try to pry it this way though and hope that that nail just pulls that other piece out because it's already it's probably broken up there too talk about a can of worms i've decided that this needs a lot more work than initially thought so i've removed the entire front frame and decided to put new drawer runners in on both sides of the cabinet the center one i'm still probably going to keep i've made a new shelf out of 3 8 ply that i will stain and finish before it goes in here um other thing that i've got finished i've got the holes on the cabinet plugged on both sides here from that handle we removed the back panel had some big tear outs from the cabinet coming loose so those are repaired other things that i've repaired are this is the front frame that i removed and the nails they had in there because it was so loose had started to break away uh the frame on on the front face so that's getting re-glued all over the place and then over here we've got those pieces with the holes that we repaired um getting a little bit of a glue because the nails did some damage on those as well so that's getting re-glued uh i've got one of the pieces that we had to drill out the center of the new dowel being put into this we're not finishing these i'm just fixing them to give them back to the customer to keep with the cabinet for if they want them in the future so those are in clamps and plugs are ready to go into those guys as well when they're dry other than that um i think that's it that uh we got the top off and i just needed to re-glue that whole top area it just was loose and broken nails and all kinds of stuff um these are beautiful nails but the problem with these cast iron nails is after after uh so many years they get pretty brittle so a lot of them have broken inside the cabinet and weren't holding anymore so i've got a lot of pieces that i had to pull out of the cabinet that were just broken and um not doing their job anymore so that's why it was so loose and i mean the glue is old and dried up as you can see so it's now just getting things back together this is the center uh drawer glide and i've added a piece of cherry um to the the base where this where it slides on one side was just a little bit worn so i think that'll be fine um i've used cherry on both sides for the slides um and the guides so those will be good it's a little bit harder than the soft wood they had in there and uh yeah so i'm not even close to getting to the finishing stages or prepping or anything yet just repairs so um i guess i can start next with the drawers which the bottoms are a little bit separating on those drawers they're a little bit gross and cruddy and disgusting so those need some cleanup um this guy here we're going to be cutting off at about this point so straight across and then figuring out some kind of a profile probably not as crazy of a a router out as this but something that i can carry through to the end here i have to figure out that for design yet and the doors need a little bit of repair i've got to make sure they're not loose but there's just a couple of chunks there are some gaps in the door so if they are loose i'll be regluing them same thing here looks like someone's put a nail or a screw or something in here so i gotta be careful about that and uh a little bit of of misalignment so it looks like someone's repaired it at some point it wasn't the greatest so that makes me want to take it apart so those will need some work and other than that the top looks like it's in pretty good condition um really not that bad considering uh but i think what i'll do just because i like my top finishes to be super durable is probably strip the top before i do the lacquer paints and that way i can get a good adhesion and i also want my if you remember our stain colors this so it's a blacker paint with a black glaze so i want my black glaze to be able to sink into the green to get it to look like this you can see there's a lot of black in the green so if i strip this i can open up a bit more of that green and get a better match to this sample so that's what i'll keep working on it's a can of worms like most old furniture but i do get carried away because i have way too much fun so i'll just keep on chugging here okay guys so this is where i've gotten on this thing uh basically i had to rebuild this whole front face frame and uh do quite a bit of gluing and clamping and and different types of fasteners to get everything to sit nicely now the sides of this cabinet have shrunk over the years so i had to shave off a little bit of wood here to get things to come back together on both sides and uh so i've been fiddling and swearing and getting this thing to fit right all all morning you never never get used to the challenges antiques bring you but it's fitting pretty good now i've actually got a fastener that's come in from the front and i did the same size plug as we did on the other side here but because they didn't have a joint here or anything holding the the front face frame to the cabinet itself i just needed to add something to keep it in place there so that was my solution there so that'll all get sanded i've got epoxy putty on everything right now the other thing i did was sand the base get that all cleaned up inside and inside it's all nicely sanded for 180. i've refit all the drawers they've got everything sanded and cleaned up inside uh slid the drawer bottom forward more so that there's not that gap at the front so that's all done uh on the interior i've got new drawer slides guides on on both sides and this one's repositioned uh so everything inside here was rebuilt and re-glued as well so now that when you put the drawer in it slides and stops nice and flush with the face frame so that took quite a bit of time just getting that to fit right but it's worth getting the fit when when you can so that's drying i've added because these stringer bars that go across the cabinet here hold everything together i've added a couple of fasteners here and here just so so i can keep things closed up top now the top itself usually does that job but it's actually not attached to the sides the attachment from the top to the sides is through these stringers so i need to make sure that these guys are fastened really well to the side to be able to hold this whole cabinet together so that's why i decided to do that and uh so that when the top does get fastened back on through this hole here this whole that hole these two holes that these uh stringers will will keep the sides on and the top just kind of sits on on these guys it has no structural uh help at all so uh other than that we did some repairs to the back this panel was broken and popped out on this side so uh this was all taken off and re-glued and popped back on i kept the old nails back here because it looks good uh these two screws here are holding the drawer slide in the center those were necessary so got those going on there same thing on this side all the plugs are filled and got a nice flush no gaps anymore on this piece you remember there were big gaps on the front front face frame here there's still a little bit so i just put some epoxy putty in there but they're all as close as i can i can get them so a lot less than it was and the drawers are fitting nice and square i might lift this one up a little bit with a a glide on the bottom of that one but other than that it's looking good so the other thing that i got to do doing was um on the shelf i did an edge tape decided to do a cherry edge tape because that's the edge tape i had and that's what made my decision so that's ready to go in and the other thing that i got finished just bring you guys over here that's easier was this back panel so this was all one piece here before if you remember when the the piece was one so i've actually cut it down to uh the lowest point i could because they want they didn't want any curly cues and then done a chamfer on the the side so that's now just a very simple uh about two inch uh back panel it's gonna be really low profile uh not gonna be super ornate um and it'll just kind of quieten up the whole piece on the back so that needs to be reattached to the back but that's all good and routered and ready to go but yeah that's as far as i've gotten it's taken quite a bit of time uh usually fitting drawers and putting slides in and getting cabinets to sit right takes quite a bit of time so remember that if you're ever doing it and uh right now i'm just waiting for putty to dry so i'm gonna do a bit of prep work on pieces that aren't drying and then um get finally to the the paint stage so i'll keep working at it okay guys so i've got the dresser all repaired and prepped and sanded and ready for the base paint so let's go through the pieces here i've got this guy all fixed up chamfers looking good on that one [Music] got our doors fixed i didn't end up removing these they were pretty solid so just did some work in the corners here [Music] the drawers uh the hardware is a little different and the old hardware wasn't really centered so i've got those drilled out for the new hardware before i paint and uh they're all prepped inside so we'll do the paint coats first and then take that off to clear coat interior drawers because they need to be encoded as well [Music] seal our plugs here everything's pricked repaired we won't be painting the interior that's all going to stay natural so i've got it up on stilts and it's ready for [Music] the first coat now one thing i always do before i paint pieces is give them a little clear coat uh so i'm gonna do that it's gonna be pretty light cause i don't wanna fill grain because i wanna get a good glaze in the grain on this piece so just be a really light clear coat just to protect the wood if anybody wants to strip it in the [Music] future [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] okay so everything's got two coats of the base color and so that'll dry over the weekend it's saturday so i'm not gonna work too hard today and uh we'll sand it down on monday and start with the black glaze and after the black glaze dries for a day then clear coats and we're done so stay tuned for more hi guys turner here with john's furniture repair so we got all the pieces here in the workbench that we painted a couple days ago they've dried so what i'm gonna do is the black glaze to get this finish here again so we're just at this point and we need to fill that grain with black so just going to give it a little bit of a sand barely anything with a 180 and i'm going to take my black glaze and just work it into all the grain and it's nice that this piece has a nice open grain we actually decided to strip the whole thing instead of just prepping it just so i can open it up as much as possible and get all that detail in there just gonna do the underside brush here good when you got it all worked in you just wipe it off that looks awesome super happy with how this is turning out a lot of times when your grain just isn't super prominent or open or porous you don't get a lot of that color to hang up and you're working it barely wiping it off but this one's super easy and it's staying really nicely so there we go it's not a perfect bang on match but it's going to be perfect for this one you can see the color is a little bit warmer on this one i could tone that in the booth but when i'm looking at it here just needs a little bit of warmth on the main part but we've got that color in the grain so that's perfect so i'm going to get to doing the other drawer the two doors the back panel the top the whole dresser and uh let it dry for night and then we'll do some toning almost lost you guys do some toning uh in the booth tomorrow in clear coats all right thanks guys [Music] [Music] [Music] okay guys we got the whole thing under black glaze looks pretty awesome loving the finish so i just wrap around with the side panel there everything else stays natural good so that's going to dry overnight and then all that's left is clear coating the outside and the inside and then installing the hardware and she's done all right okay guys so i got everything set up in the booth for clear coats i did a little bit of a tint with merlin's uh peach just to warm it up a little bit and everything it's got kind of like a warmish peachy tinge just to come into that sample a little bit more so everything is ready for top coat so i'll do at least three top coats on everything and the interior as well as the drawers and that shelf we made uh get everything sealed so i'll probably do two coats right away sand it down and then do the final coat all right okay guys here it is all finished three coats of lacquer buffed inside and out all the hardware's on everything installed it's looking awesome so you remember we did our back piece with the chamfer that's looking a lot more um mission style like they wanted isn't that beautiful grain that you can see with the the black glaze just sitting in there so nicely we've got our drawers all refinished they're nice and smooth inside the hardware looks pretty awesome i think that hammered steel look looks really nice or iron or whatever you want to call it i love how the doors look you remember there was gaps on all the corners here so that looks a lot better having those filled as well and the interior of this cabinet was all sealed and sanded and it's also nice and smooth we've got a new shelf built in there so that we just kept all natural we've got one of these little swivel locks that keeps this door in and then this door has a little ball catch that hits them so yeah looking good you can see our repairs to those remember there was big holes here and here you can sort of see it but it really just does kind of fade into the side of the cabinet and then we also put another fastener in the front here you can see this one a little bit more um here and somewhere here it's hidden really nicely anyways same on the side there you can't really see them so that worked out really nicely i'm really happy about that it looks pretty good and i'm excited to give it back to the customers they're coming tomorrow to pick it up and i think they're going to be pretty pleased so thanks for joining me on another one guys and stay tuned for the next project don't forget to like and subscribe

Channel: John's Furniture Repair

Views: 27,047

Rating: 4.9556541 out of 5

Keywords: antique, furniture, repair, stripping, paint

Id: MvPBMYtv3Zc

Length: 29min 57sec (1797 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 25 2021