Thrift Store Rescue #20 | Repairing and Refinishing A Vintage Table | Furniture Restoration

i haven't been finding much old furniture to work on this winter so i was happy to stumble upon this old table in a thrift store recently it's got a lot of issues the veneer on the top is coming off in a few spots this drop leaf is pretty badly warped this leg has been broken and it looks like somebody tried to repair it once using what looks like polyurethane glue but it didn't work it's got some chip veneer i like these little mahogany trays in the drawer and here you can see the manufacturers tag which says wittycomb for some reason it's in there upside down i started by turning the table over and taking a look at the broken leg and while i had it upside down i also checked the other leg to see if that was loose and it was a bit loose if i tried to wiggle it i could see this glue block moving and it might be hard to see on camera but it looks like it's no longer glued down both of the legs are attached to the top of the table by these two rails that run along the bottom and the rails are screwed to the table top so i would be able to just take those screws out and take the whole assembly off to work on it later on i gave the broken leg a few taps with a rubber mallet and it came off pretty easily and i was also able to take this cross piece out it was also loose i had to remove the remnants of the old glue that was on there i just used a chisel for some of it and sandpaper to get the rest i kept sanding until i was getting wood dust as opposed to glue dust i also noticed that these two dowels were loose they weren't quite loose enough for me to pull them out easily but since i was going to be re-gluing this whole thing i didn't want to re-glue it with these dowels even slightly loose so i decided to remove them and put new ones in to do that i first sawed off the tops of the dowels and then drilled down into the center and i used a drill bit that was a little bit smaller than the dowel itself so that i didn't accidentally enlarge the hole and then i picked away at whatever was left of the dowel in the hole and then i ran a slightly larger drill bit through it to clean up the hole and then i had a good fit for the new dowels then it was time to apply some new glue and then clamp it together and i had to get a little creative with the clamps on this one because of the shape of the legs once that glue was dry then i could glue it back to the rest of the leg assembly but then i decided to remove the whole bottom portion from the top to make it a little easier to work on both of them and then i just put some new glue on and started reassembling once i had one leg back together then i could put the cross piece on and then put the other leg back on and i ended up taking that other leg completely off because that joint where it attached to the cross rails was loose as well so i needed to re-glue that so i just took the whole thing off and then i clamped it up next i worked on this piece of chip veneer on the drawer front and i could tell that this had been repaired once before i could see a little bit of dried glue residue on the drawer front i started by using a chisel to straighten up that edge and then i cut a piece of mahogany veneer to fit the patch and then i applied some super glue and i'm using super glue as opposed to wood glue because i'm not sure if there's any of the old glue still left in there or what kind of glue it was that the previous person used to try to fix this so to be safe i use super glue which will stick to most things once it was dry then i could trim off the excess and i'm just using a wood block here to give me something to cut against and to prevent tearing off any of the veneer with the knife and then a little bit of sanding once it was sanded then i applied a little bit of grain filler using grain filler will help the patch blend in more with the original veneer on the rest of the drawer front this mahogany has some open pores in it which are kind of like little pits in the wood or little holes and on the original veneer those have been filled either with grain filler or finish when it was made at the factory so here i'm using the grain filler to fill in any of those pits in the grain so it looks smoother and it will look more like the veneer from the factory and then i applied just a little bit of clear shellac i put this on just to seal the wood a little bit so that it won't absorb quite as much stain the sealer will prevent it from getting away from me too quickly from getting too dark too fast for the stain i just used some walnut gel stain i put a little bit on and then took a dry brush and just kind of gently brushed it out to get off excess without removing all of it and i had to do this a few times put a little on take a little off over and over again until it looked right next i worked on this drop leaf which was badly warped and the veneer was coming off to try to flatten the whole piece i put it in a vise and then put some clamps on it to see if i could force it back into shape and i knew that doing this might actually break it even more but i didn't see any other alternative except to make a whole new drop leaf so this seemed like a good first try the condition couldn't really get any worse than it already was but this actually ended up working pretty well it did flatten in the vise and with the clamps but there was still this one crack in the back which was still open even after it had flattened out so to fill that i decided to use a piece of veneer that i cut to fit into the crack and i would do this when i was gluing it up so that would fill that gap in the boards and then i could start getting some glue in there underneath the veneer and into the cracks you and then i could put that piece of veneer in that open crack and i'm only working on the middle portion of the board i'll work on the sides after this had dried once it had dried it looked pretty good it did flatten out considerably it wasn't perfect but it was way better than it was and i felt like it was better than the alternative which would be to build a whole new drop leaf so now the middle was glued down but i could tell by tapping on it that the sides did still need to be glued you'll notice the difference in the sound of the tap when you're tapping on a piece of veneer that's not glued down like the outer portions and then the middle part that i just glued sounds a lot more solid then it was time to work on the sides as you can see the veneer is very loose it's barely glued down at all here's the middle part that i just glued up which sounds pretty solid now except for this one part by the front edge that didn't get glue so i'll take care of that when i do the sides and i did the sides pretty much the same way i just got some glue in there and then clamped it up the finish on most of this piece was in pretty good shape except for the top so i did need to refinish the top to get the old finish off i decided to scrape it off with a paint scraper when i got as much finish off as i could with the scraper then i did some hand sanding then i could apply the stain to the top i first applied a walnut liquid oil stain and it looked good but it did look a little too reddish amber-ish compared to the rest of the piece which is mostly straight brown although it varies depending on what part you're looking at the drawer fronts are a little bit more reddish than the rest of the piece probably because they also have mahogany veneer on them like the top does so i decided to tone it down a little bit by applying a walnut gel stain over it and although both stains are called walnut they're actually a little different in color the liquid one first one i put on has a little more red in it and the gel stain is more brown which is what i wanted so i applied the gel stain and then wiped the excess off here you can compare the color of the leaf with the gel stain on it compared to the one that i haven't applied the gel stain to yet the one with the gel stain it looks a little bit more brown to me when the stain had dried then i could apply the top coat and i'm using water locks as the top coat and just wiping it on with a little piece of a cotton rag the original finish was probably lacquer but i don't have anywhere to spray lacquer indoors here and it was too cold and windy outside to apply that so i went with a wipe-on finish instead when the top coat had dried it looked a little bit too glossy for my taste and also it had some little bits of dust and things in it that you could feel in the finish so to smooth it out and to dull the glossiness down a bit i rubbed it gently with a gray scotch brite pad you could also use steel wool for this and i do sometimes but one thing i don't like about steel wool is it can sometimes leave a grayish dust on the surface and if there are any open pores or defects in the wood sometimes that dust can get caught in there and kind of make a mess so to avoid that i'll sometimes use these pads after the gray pad then i used a white pad which is supposed to have about the same abrasive quality as 4-0 steel wool and this just smoothed it out a little bit more and brought a little bit of the sheen back to it that the gray pad had knocked down and then i went over it with some wax on the rest of the piece i also used some wax on the old finish just to kind of liven it up a little bit give it a little bit more luster before i started reassembling the table i did have to fix this support for one of the drop leaves it had a crack in it i couldn't figure out how to get the support off without taking off the whole tabletop so i just left it in place and shot some glue in there and then put a clamp on it then i put the drop leaves back on and screwed the leg assembly back onto the top and here it is all finished my way thanks for watching

Channel: Dashner Design & Restoration

Views: 149,094

Rating: 4.9311595 out of 5

Keywords: #DIY, #restoration, asmr, woodworking

Id: TndyJGwv8T8

Length: 27min 48sec (1668 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 21 2021