Schoolmaster's Desk Restoration. I made a Masculine Rustic Desk and I love it .

foreign [Music] I'll be restoring this mid-century teacher's desk so now that the desk is disassembled we can have a closer look so the desk goes a little Dusty and it looked like the dust was at least 200 years old which obviously it wasn't and it had those two sliding extra work surfaces on both sides which I thought was really cool the drawers were stained very badly with ink which I knew was gonna be very difficult to remove those stains most of the surfaces on this desk were warped and just generally out of shape lots of little holes loose joints and I knew I had my work cut out for me I decided to tackle the top first and I'm usually very optimistic when it comes to saving Furniture but the top was in such a rough shape that I didn't know if I was gonna be able to save it unfortunately it was just a very thin veneer on a thin plywood and lots of it was already gone so as I was trying to come up with an action plan I had a close look at the rest of the desk when you buy secondhand vintage furniture you never know if the jewelries are in their original place but I marked them as if they were and as I was doing it I discovered a few more problems I had to start somewhere so I cleaned up the bottom of the top and I flipped it over and started scraping off the varnish just wanted to quickly say a huge thank you to all of you guys who support me via buy me a coffee or all the other links that you can find down below thank you so much at this point I knew it was gonna be a challenge and I need a little pick-me-up to help me get through it obviously I'm joking but I just couldn't help myself I'm not going to make you watch the whole process because it was super difficult very labor intensive and I think I give up three times but I really wanted to save this top so I kept trying because during the manufacturing process they used grain filler a stain and a top coat it was almost impossible to remove it because the venue was so thin so I tried everything I had all the thinners and paint strippers and bleachers you name it I tried it all I don't think I've ever done that much sanding in my life and I just wanted to curl in a bowl and cry somewhere in the corner but I really wanted to save this beautiful veneer it was one continuous piece and I just wanted to do everything I could to keep it I applied a few coats of oxalic acid but there were still some stains that it didn't remove unfortunately and as you can see there is some dark stain deep inside the Grain and also some white grain filler and I just couldn't remove it as far as the edge bending I was just gonna replace it all together as I was waiting for the oxalic acid to do its thing I removed handles from the drawers and there was actually one drawer that was a double but it was made to look like two separate drawers so you'll see what I did with it later on in the video one of the handles was actually glued on so I use my heat gun to slowly warm it up soften the glue and I use the Chisel to help me pry it off [Music] there was some really bad ink stains and I knew it was going to be impossible to remove them so I was gonna clean it up as much as I could and possibly just reverse the bottom of the drawer so this desk was nicely put together and there was some quality joinery going on and as far as I can tell this is our best schoolmaster's desk and they were very popular between 1940s and 1950s and I wanted to keep this one for myself foreign I use my heat gun to remove the edge banding and yes the top is black but just ignore it because it changed color probably three or four times so you'll see what I did with it eventually so I'm gonna replace this Edge bending with white oak out bending if you've never done it before it's extremely simple you just use a normal iron and just iron it on I've got two sides down and I normally just warm the veneer a little bit and then use my iron to cover it around the corner I have a handle on a piece of wood for 70 80 years it leaves a significant mark because the wood around it ages differently than underneath and it's super difficult to remove it so I use my planer to get rid of the bevel and the marks with it the largest drawer didn't fit on my electric planer so I had to do it by hand [Music] I also took all the drawers apart I used my sander to clean it up and I put them back together as you can see this joint is completely loose so I need to put it back together I'm gonna send this and see what it looks like [Music] foreign Ed out nicely and I will be able to use it as it was don't need to flip it upside down there is a stain that I won't be able to remove I know that but that's fine it will be partially covered by the side of the drawer so it's okay foreign [Music] [Music] did you guys know that over 82 percent of you watching my videos are not subscribed so I'm not done sanding this drawer but there's literally not a single straight line on this desk and just to show you what I'm talking about look at this and yeah that's everywhere this one is gluing as well that goes for most of the joints this desk actually looked much better before I took it apart it actually turns out it's in a pretty rough condition it didn't look as bad when it was all put together I left it to dry and I went home for a coffee break and I had an unexpected visitor no idea whose cab that was but it was very friendly okay and the kitty felt very much at home as you can see and back to work I sanded the rest of the pieces all the connecting beads and those sliding whatever you call them [Music] [Music] I was finally done sanding at this point and I just applied oxalic acid throughout the whole piece just to basically get rid of any stains and to even out the tone and also there were some repairs that I needed to make but I wanted to wait for the oxalic acid to do its thing just to see what the final color was it's really nice today so I'm gonna work outside this is where I am right now most of the pieces pretty much all of them are sanded I've used oxalic acid on them so they're pretty much done and ready for the next step so this drawer has some issues it doesn't fit anymore so we need to fix this [Music] [Music] this is after the oxalic acid has dried up and as you can see the grain is raised but I was going to give it a final sanding anyway and I also need to do some small repairs there was a large crack that was not moving so I was not able to clamp it together and glue it so I used two-part epoxy to fill the gap foreign [Music] I also used it epoxy to fix one of the legs and you'll see a little bit later how I color matched it to the rest of the wood so I use this wood filler which was the first time I was using it and it turned out it was a bit too light so I fixed it later on and you'll see how I did it [Music] so as I mentioned before I really wanted to keep the top and you can see that it's black just because I stain it but I tried different color of waxes and stains and serious finish and at this point I'm just sanding it gently and a lot of the dye came off which I quite liked and I used some black wax on top of it and it gave me a really cool vintage a bit rustic look and I was very happy with it and to touch up those little white spots I used fine tape brush markers and that did the trick I'm not gonna bore you with sanding the wood filler I'll just go straight to applying the Finish I also replaced a missing stopper I put the desk together and I color matched the wood filler that I used before I also use those fine tape markers to help me hide the repairs this is the part that I like the most and I hate the most at the same time because it's very easy to mess up I'm thinking to apply one of these oils and I actually get a little bit of something that's called tinter so this is not paint it's an additive that you can add to oils to change the color slightly so in my case I want to keep it kind of bleached I don't want it to be orange or yellow and that's what often happens when you apply the top coat or wax or oil but enough of me talking well I guess I'm still talking so I decided to go with osmo in Saturn and I used a very tiny amount of the tinter and you'll see that it gave me a really cool very natural looking color and I was quite surprised actually and I tested it on one of those sliding pieces because normally you can see them so if I didn't like it I could just leave it inside as this is my desk and I used one of these osmo pads which I never tried before to apply it with [Music] [Music] I really like this oil it gives very natural silky smooth finish so this is what I'm most worried about um is this area where I used the markers but I'm hoping that this will make it darker and it will help to blend it in and I think this is exactly what's happening I mean if you didn't know this was a repair you probably wouldn't even notice the sun has come out so I'll do a little more footage so you can actually see what it looks like in good lighting I don't know if you can see that on camera but it looks really nice and for the drawers I use my favorite natural orange scented beeswax foreign and this is the very last thing so this was attached to the top of the desk and it was broken so I glued it together off camera and I'm gonna send it it's a bit bent but I think once I screw it in place it will look okay so I wasn't sure if I wanted to keep this but I think it will be actually useful I also couldn't decide if I wanted to keep this black or brown like the bottom half of desk and I just did what exactly what I did with the rest of the desk I sanded it used the oxalic acid and then I applied osmo oil and I'm very happy I didn't actually use the Black Box on it because it looked really cool a lot when things work this looked really crappy even though I sanded it it's still it still looked like old wood and I think the oxalic acid is gonna make a big difference so I'm just screwing on the top and I was getting very excited because it was the time to attach the handles and as you remember one of the drawers on the bottom right is a double even though it looks like they're two separate drawers and I couldn't use the handle that I bought for this project so you'll see what I did so somehow I got these handles that are pretty much perfect length of the drawer which was super cool I literally just use my sander to trim off very tiny bit on both ends just to make them fit perfectly but I had to cut out those Corners to actually screw them in place to do that I just use my angle grinder that I put in a vise to make it easier for me as is often the case I'm almost done with the project and I've decided to add the handle so there is a symmetry on both sides and you guys don't comment that there is a handle missing because I know that that would happen because it doesn't bother me personally but I think that's what it was because there were three handles on each side so let's I'm Gonna Keep It look at that intense facial expression so basically what I did I figured that the width of the Japanese pool saw was very similar with to the handle so I cut a very shallow Groove and I cut the handle just enough so I was able to put it inside this groove and glue it in place I don't know if it makes sense but you will see what I'm talking about I'm almost done with the video thank you guys so much for watching please do like comment and subscribe and see you soon it was a very tight fit but I used some super glue and a rubber mallet to put it in place and it worked perfectly wow um I can't believe that this looks as good as it is it's just perfect if you didn't know this was not a drawer you wouldn't know and it actually looks more like a drawer than it did before [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music]

Channel: Flippingdrawers

Views: 289,331

Keywords: desk, restoration, furniture, teacher's desk, schoolmaster's desk, vintage, upcycling

Id: D1UKGZndVlo

Length: 21min 51sec (1311 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 19 2022