I Found A Mid Century Credenza On The Side Of The Road And Restoration Ensued.

I found this credenza for free on the side of the road it had been sitting in the rain for a while and was in rough shape but I could tell that it could still be saved so I took it home the condition wasn't too bad considering that it had been sitting outside for a while there were a couple of spots where the veneer had pulled off and the wood that was exposed looked pretty clean so I wouldn't be surprised if that happened when it was being moved outside the finish was in bad shape so a refinish was in order I originally thought that the top was some kind of stone but it turns out that it's a man-made product called colorless which is a fiber cement board thankfully it's in great shape so all I'll need to do is clean it off a little bit it is heavy though so it does make a little difficult to move the credenza around at least for one person because it is so top-heavy it looked like it was missing something that would have gone on the upper shelf on the left side I saw a picture online of another one of these that had a removable serving tray that went in there I'm not sure if that was original but it seems like a good idea so I decided to make one which will be later in the video so the first thing I did was to remove the top and this was pretty easy it was just held in place by some screws and once the screws were out I could just slide the top right off and once that was off the piece was a lot lighter and a lot easier to move around especially for just one person next it was time to strip off the finish and to do this I just brushed on some stripper and let it sit for a while and then scraped it off it was kind of cold out that day and I've had a hard time finding a good stripper these days so this took a while I eventually got the finish off the sides but on the doors it just was not working well at all so I decided to take them inside and use a different stripper that was safer to use inside because it doesn't really smell very much but first I had to take the doors off and to do that I unscrewed the hinges most of the screws came out easily but there was one that had a stripped head and I tried a few different sizes of Phillips screwdrivers and none of them could get enough grip to get it out I found in this situation that it sometimes helps to heat up the screw so I got a small soldering iron got it nice and hot and applied it to the head of the screw for a couple of minutes and then I tried to find a screwdriver that would get a grip on the head of the screw and that turned out to be a small straight screwdriver instead of a Phillips which is what it originally would have taken and I was able to get a grip on it with that screwdriver and get the screw out so inside I went with the doors and just in time because the first snow had fallen and it was starting to get pretty cold outside I took the doors downstairs to the basement and applied another coat of stripper but this time it was a different kind of stripper and this one doesn't smell much at all so I was okay using it indoors the stripper did a pretty good job of removing any finish that was left but there were still some spots that weren't removed so I tried scraping those off with a utility knife blade and I also scrubbed down the door with some lacquer thinner to try to get off any remaining finish and once the door was dry I headed back outside to do some sanding on the edges of the doors I just scraped the finish off I didn't put any stripper on the edges because I didn't want it to drip over the edge onto the back of the door which is the interior side the finish on the interior is in good shape and it didn't need to be stripped so it's just safer to move to finish this way I also scraped off the finish on the bottom of the credenza and also on the narrow strips on the front of the credenza and I did it this way just because it was easier to just scrape it off in these spots then try to deal with the stripper and you can see by this time I brought the Granta inside into my porch which is semi heated but it was a lot warmer than it was outside next it was time to work on the veneer issues and I started with the smaller patch in the upper corner I have a bunch of walnut veneer lying around so I just tried to find a piece that matched the color of the credenza closest and most of it was too dark but I did have this one piece of veneer that had a dark section in a lighter section and the dark section was too dark but the lighter part of it was pretty close to the credenza probably as close as I was going to get so I used that I used some tape to get an idea of the size of the patch that I would need and I made it just a little bit bigger than the damage on the credenza and then I took that tape off and applied it to the piece of veneer and then cut out the patch with an exacto knife then I place the patch over the damaged area and traced around it with the exacto knife and then just trimmed off the veneer so that it would match the new veneer patch and I had to use two layers of veneer one layer wouldn't have been thick enough and then it was time to glue in the patch normally I would use wood glue for this but I was afraid it was too cold on my porch for the wood glue to dry properly so I used superglue in this case once the glue is dry I came back with a chisel and cut off any excess veneer that was hanging over the edge the chisel worked really well when I was cutting with the grain of the veneer but when I had to go across the grain I just cut it with a utility knife instead and made sure to back it with a piece of wood so I wouldn't just tear it off once I had it all cleaned up I went over it with some sandpaper just to smooth it out and I also went over the patch with some wood filler this is a water-based wood filler it's really easy to use and this will fill in any voids around the edge of the patch but it will also fill in the grain over the entire patch and that will help it to not stick out as much from the rest of the veneer on the credenza because the rest of the veneer would have had the grain filled at the factory so this will just help the patch to blend in a little better with the rest of the veneer then it was time to work on the other veneer repair which is in the bottom corner in the back the first thing I had to do was to fill in a low spot in the wood where some of the wood had been torn out just so I have a flat surface to work with and I used epoxy putty for this I wanted to clean up the edge of the veneer that was on there so that I had a nice straight line to work with so I used this tool I think it's called a tea bevel and that just gave me a guide to cut along so I had a nice straight line and then I remove any excess veneer and I removed the layer underneath so that I had a nice flat surface to work with and again I had to use two layers of veneer on this because one just wouldn't have been thick enough so I glued one down first and then glued the other on top and I cut out this piece of wood to use under the clamp to help keep it flat while it tried once it was dry I came back with a chisel and a knife and trimmed off the excess on the edges and then I sanded the sides with an orbital sander next up was the stain and I used a walnut gel stain then it was time to make the serving tray that will go inside the credenza and for this I used 1/2 inch birch plywood I started by taking 2 strips of plywood one of them was long enough for the sides and the other one was long enough for the ends and I cut a round over on each side then I took both pieces to the miter saw and cut a 45 degree miter on each end after that I took both pieces to the table saw and then I split them down the middle so that I now had two sides and two ends and they each had the round over on the top edge I didn't put any round over on the bottom edge then I ran all the pieces over the table saw to cut a slot that the bottom of the tray will rest in to make the handles on either side I took the pieces to the drill press and with a Forstner bit just cut some holes all the way through to rough out the opening for the handle and then I took it over to the sander and just smooth them out a bit then I took them to the router to put a round over on the handle openings and that's where I ran into a problem on one end the router bit tore out a big chunk from the plywood and instead of making a whole new side piece I wanted to try to repair the tear out and to do that I took a piece of scrap plywood that I had lying around that I had actually already done a round over on because I was using it just to practice and it's the same by wood so the grain matches and I just cut a chunk out of just a couple of the plies just enough to fill in the tear out and then I cleaned up the repair area try to get it flat and test fit the patch and it actually fit pretty good just needed to be trimmed a little bit but I would do that after I glued it in and I just applied some superglue and then clamp the piece on and once the glue is dry I could go back with a chisel and a knife and some sandpaper and just clean up the repair and make it nice and smooth [Music] and with that complete I was ready to glue it all together once the stain was dry it was time for the topcoat and I'm using a satin wipe on oil-based polyurethane and I'm just applying it with a piece of an old cotton t-shirt I probably put about three or four thin coats on it if you want more protection and more durability you can put more coats on it you can put as many coats on it as you want but I prefer to have the look of a thinner coat I also used that same polyurethane on the tray and I decided not to stain this because birch plywood can be really hard to stain without it looking blotchy and ugly so I decided just to leave it natural and I think it looks pretty good like that next it was time to do some touch-up on one of the veneer patches and this was the big one in the lower back corner and as you can see there's a pretty clear line where the patch meets the rest of the veneer so I wanted to try to blend that in a little bit and I just used some acrylic paint that I got at a craft store and just mixed up a color that I thought would match the even ear and I brushed it on and I was trying to lighten that line because as it was it was just too dark so I'm just trying to lighten it up a bit and it's important to remember that once this piece is done and in a room in somebody's house nobody's going to be looking at this spot as closely as we are now so it doesn't need to be perfect you're just looking to create the illusion that that's all one piece of veneer and that the patch is not there line colored in the patch was looking pretty good but I felt like the color was still a little off on the entire veneer patch I wanted to get it closer to the rest of the veneer so to do this I took some gel stain and this time the color was candlelight which has a little more red than the walnut stain that I originally used and I just wiped some on and then took a dry brush and brushed it out trying to remove any excess and also blending it into the original veneer after that it was looking a lot better but there was still one more thing I wanted to do there was a grain line a dark grain line running down the original piece of veneer and it just stopped abruptly at the scene between the two pieces of veneer so I wanted to try to continue that into the new piece of veneer again trying to create the illusion that the patch isn't there and it's just one piece of it near so I took some black dye and added just a little bit to the gel stain just to darken it and took a brush and just lightly add it in that grain line onto the patch and after I was done blending in the patch I went over it again with some polyurethane just to seal in the stain the new stain that I put over it this piece had four magnetic door catches and each one of them was completely broken so I had to get some new ones and they were just slightly smaller than the originals so I did have to fill in one screw hole and drill a new hole for the screw but other than that it was pretty straightforward I added a bunch of these little feet to the bottom to to keep it off the ground keep it off the floor in case somebody slides it around these will help to protect the bottom edge and here it is all finished thanks for watching

Channel: Dashner Design & Restoration

Views: 824,477

Keywords: diy, restoration, vintage, mid century

Id: Cj8h1aEGYos

Length: 29min 37sec (1777 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 02 2020