Trena repairs, modifies, and refinishes mahogany corner cabinets

hey everyone it's tron at john's furniture repair starting a new project in the shop today so these two beautiful corner china cabinets are part of a large dining dining room set that we did a while ago and i've been working on doing a few modifications and then just refinishing the two pieces to match the rest of the dining room suite so these two pieces are staying in the same color um but they're just getting a little bit deeper because they're a little bit washed out and sun bleached and the finish is crazed and cracked and and needs to be refinished so the other two things that we're doing um we're taking out the wood shelves that they've got and replacing them with glass shelves so i've got four of these guys heavy gauge glass shelf made that we're putting in and so basically i'm just taking the old wooden shelf out like that and then we're adding to the little shelf holders inside just adding a silicone button that the glass will sit on so that gets um epoxied onto or super glued onto this piece and then because we can't screw into the shelf from the bottom because it's glass we're adding a strip of walnut onto the top of the drawers they won't really see it it'll be and i'll show you so i'll put these on here just so i can show you what i mean [Music] pop these guys on awesome on these and then the shelf sits on those and then what i've been doing is just adding these walnut strips that will get stained to match and they're going to be screwed in from the back and they'll just be back there stained in the same color and that way you won't get the tipping that can happen with the shelf so that's the one modification that we're doing to these the other one is that we're adding a couple of lights puck lights in the top so i've ordered these guys these guys here so i'm thinking i'm gonna do two of these lights up here so i've gotta drill through this top from the top and um [Music] figure out my placement on these guys so that'll be nice because they'll be able to they'll be like a little switch that i'll attach the side um and they'll be able to uh put a lot of stuff in here and light it up and it'll look a lot nicer with the lights will be less dark than all the wood you'll be able to enjoy the inside of their cabinet as well so that's what i've been working on i've got the pieces made for the wine i just got to do this one here and get the shelves all uh situated in there and i can take everything off and remove the hardware and uh so i'm just stripping the drawers the doors um and the outside face and the flat surfaces everything else is just gonna get uh cleaned and a little bit of a toner like the back panels and then we'll lock her over everything so it's uh nicely sealed up and all the all the same machine and uh the other thing that i find all the time with cabinets china cabinets is these wooden slats here what is wrong with this picture this is the outside this is the inside it's really easy to clean the inside when you put your glass flat on the outside but you never need to clean the inside because the outside's dirty now i don't know how many times i've switched it around in cabinets but i mean obviously these have been taken out and removed these wooden slats i always go on the inside of cabinets and i don't know why they get switched up and put in different places and i've asked myself is that you know true for every cabinet because i seem to find it a lot and i'm like well maybe they wanted to you know have the wood prominent but it just doesn't make any sense for cleaning and uh for keeping this thing in good shape because it just dries out out here it's such thin wood that it wants to crack all the time it should be behind the glass so you can clean the outside your glass without having these wood pieces in the way and keeps this protected even though it you know it's behind glass in the woods on a different plane it still looks good and uh it just makes way more sense so i always just take those out put them on the other side and make everybody's life easier so this is also rounded glass so i gotta be really careful not to break this because it's a big pain in the butt to replace rounded glass in china cabinets so the only other big issue with these pieces is this cabinet here has uh some water damage on the base so this is all lifted here so we'll have to get that on its back and repair all of that the other one doesn't have that damage so that's good you can see down here um where the finish is all lifting here and cracking off and flaking it's old shellac so we just need to get this all off and put a fresh finish on to get it back to good all right so i'm gonna start with all the carpentry though and get the shelf slots made so that those are made and i can put the glass away and uh start measuring and cutting holes for the lights so those be my first two things so let's get at it okay so i've made a couple of blocks so that all of my wood slats get measured and drilled in the same place so i made a little three inch block that i'm just gonna mark where i'm going to be drilling into and then i'll drill my two holes to go through perfect so on the back side i'm gonna do a countersink [Music] so here's my two holes i'm just gonna countersink perfect so kind of the same this will get stained up to match the back there great all right so now i'll get the glass shelf back in here so i know exactly where my wooden slat can go and i've made another little block to space it from this side so that i know they're on the same side so i'm just going to use a little bit of double-sided tape put a piece of double-sided tape on my block so it stays where i need it to stay and that'll just space it perfectly right there all right [Applause] now this is the tricky part so i've got to hold on to that and give a little bit of pressure while i drill from the back so i need a bit of a spaghetti noodle get my hand in this side just to press on it a little bit okay so now if you grab onto the side you cannot tip this thing over it's not extensive here but any downward pressure it's not going to flip if you put like a heavy whiskey bottle or something glass on there and it won't flip i'm just thinking about whiskey that's all okay so now i can take that piece off and remove all of that hardware and do this one and then we'll be done on the shelves so i'll get at it okay so i've got this uh china cabinet with the veneer that's lifted here on its back and i'm just noticing that a lot of the corner blocks are loose and this one had dropped off and i tipped it over and there is some water damage down here now i'm not gonna worry about getting this veneer back down it's not gonna go anywhere um but i will remove all of these uh corner blocks that have come loose and are no longer doing anything and just re-glue those so that i know that the space is all uh at least glued together and it looks like i mean i have one that fell off but it looks like i'll need to make at least two more that are missing from here so i'll get to that and then uh right here you can see all the veneer that's lifted all the water damage it's kind of gone through a couple layers here and the worst of it is over here where both layers the under layer and the top veneer have been lifted and then there's a piece of veneer missing here that i'll have to replace so i'll probably end up peeling up most of this unless it's really stuck and doesn't want to come but um getting this all back together is important because it'll just continue to chip yeah it looks like right here we've got a split in the under or the substrate and these guys are rusty so i'm going to take those all out and put in different feet just because they're so gross well it's all up here on blocks so i'm doing this before i get the lights in just because i had to tip it over anyways to do the work up on the uh the light placement it's much easier to do the light placement with the back up like that and i can measure everything perfectly and get it all centered but first let's get these corner blocks off and re-glue this base all right so it would be nice to bring get some glue in there i think i'm going to work some glue in there and then when i put this corner block down i'm just gonna put a nail through it just so it kind of holds it there and uh yeah i know if i'm gonna clamp any of this just use some tight bonds my glue nozzle is like the number one thing that i do in this shop i always clogged never a day where it's not all right so i'm just gonna run some glue down in this groove that's opened up here and then to get it up i'll just get some on my knife and i'm going to get my staple gun and maybe just shoot a couple staples in here just to hold it the seam closed while it dries i'm not worried if it's like completely down just so that it's enough to keep it from flapping around down here all right i'll just shoot a couple there at least it's not moving around anymore on me good all right so let's glue these corner blocks [Music] [Music] okay so i'm going to take off these rusted feet they're really gross don't need those they're not doing any good to anybody's floor now i'm down here this is all the good stuff to do if you have your giant cabinet upside down i think i might even tip over the other china cabinet and see if it needs any okay so i like to replace the old metal uh feet uh with these plastic glides they hold up really well they're like neoprene and they make it a lot easier to move your furniture around this big heavy stuff is really easy to move with these when it's on a floor and it doesn't scratch and i like it because it doesn't have an adhesive it's got a nail so it's not gonna start um coming off of your chair and leave a big gunky glue pile along the way so i'm just going to put them off to the side a little bit in a different hole [Music] so that they're not going back exactly where the old ones were which is all okay so i've got my wacky bendy plywood piece cut which i will use for a clamping surface on here so that's all ready so now i just get to gluing up everything i'm going to peel off this tape and somebody got on here some more ago try to keep it together so i'm going to split this one off here because it's loose looks like somebody tried to glue it at some point but it's not stuck all the way down i'm just gonna kind of pop it up best i can if that side wants to stay stuck that's fine but i know that all along this edge here all the way down to the other side is split so i'll need to work glue so i'm going to first work glue into the bottom layer here okay so i'll just get a blob on here and spread it right to the point where i can barely get my knife in so now my favorite glue to use for a veneer repair or maybe i should say for reveneering is high glue because i just find that it's so much more workable it's reversible it's you can heat it up with an iron or unstick things that didn't go well or whatever but for this project i think that this water proof type round is a good idea it looks like this thing sees a lot of mopping and i don't wanna have the veneer lift again on them if i had to re-veneer a table or case or whatever it was i would definitely go with hide so now that i've got the under layment full of glue then i can work glue into the veneer so i'm just going to start on one end here making sure to cover both sides [Music] so i like to kind of squish it up into place seems to work pretty good take your time doing this part because if you don't get glue everywhere then you're gonna have a loose piece and it's gonna be really hard to glue after it's all mostly stuck down so take your time just getting glue into all the areas and making sure and rechecking [Music] if there is in fact enough glue in there [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] all right so it's the next morning in the shop and it's time to take all these clamps off of here so let's get them off and see how it looks all right it looks pretty good i'm happy with that this is the main area here that was really lifted and that's all super solid now even though it looks like a mess but that's okay so we can get all this cleaned up off here and check for any areas that were missed looks like it was pretty much all so it looks a little bit flaky over there so might have to glue up a little bit on that end but all this looks really good so right here we need to do a veneer patch so i'll show you guys how we do that when we get to it but uh i think that looks good i'm just going to clean up the the glue and newspaper and get a little bit more glue on that end and that'll be good okay okay so getting the placement started for these lights what i've done here is taken a nail and on a string with a pencil measured it where i want the two lights to go and draw an arc here so now what i need to do is figure out how far up each side i want to go i'm thinking probably at least five inches from each corner would do it and that would place my lights right in the middle of that line on both sides now when putting these lights in i don't want them too far forward because i want to light things from the back forward just because that'll be the darkest area of the cabinet so when you're putting lights in a cabinet leave you know your three quarters of space here and a quarter space down here so that's kind of what you can see that i've got here so that you've got light coming from the back forward um otherwise if you put your your light way up here you're gonna have dark spots in the back of your cabinet and you wouldn't be able to see all the things that you've got there and maybe hidden by shadows from what you've got on the shelves in the front so if you're doing this that's just something to note so i think i'm gonna go at least five inches up this arc which would place it right about there on either side maybe five or six inches for the center and uh i'll make my pinhole i thought i had a uh hole saw but it looks like it's broken so i'll have to go pick up another hole saw the drill for these guys uh but anyways i'll get to that when i do i can get them all marked out and ready to go this way and and then drill it when i have the saw so that's basically how i'm going to do this so i'll get to it okay so while i wait for a few more little spot repairs on just a couple little areas i found that needed some more pressure i've got both of the um lights puck lights marked out on both of these guys so when i get the hole saw which i ordered from lee valley uh then i can drill those holes in the meantime i'm getting some stripping done uh i've got one of the doors done and i'm just working on these guys uh so i don't use stripper on these things because they um just make it just makes a big mess so i take a 220 grit sand paper and just uh sanded off of the finish and i wasn't gonna sand these because they're usually in better condition than these ones are but you can see on this other one that the finish is kind of lifted and flaky and just not in good condition so it's kind of the same thing that's happened on the rest of the cabinet here so i've just decided we're going to strip that as well everything on the outside pretty much needs to be stripped on these cabinets so the other thing that i'm doing here is on the back of these doors and the inside of the cabinets there was a lot of dents and this is a mahogany cabinet so it's pretty soft wood so i'm just going to be steaming up a couple of these dents you can kind of see them there in the light so i'm just going to take my iron it's a little tricky with a round edge piece but you can still just kind of keep it moving over those areas it's just kind of on the bottom of this door and so what this does is the water kind of expands the wood fibers and then when you go to steam it it kind of boils the water in between those fibers and fluffs everything back up and it works pretty good for a lot of uh dents and things out of these softer woods and you don't have to do a ton of ton of sanding especially if something is a veneer and you don't have a lot of sanding room to go if you've got big dents it's always nice to do a steam on something first [Music] so i'm just going to try to get all this dried up here wherever i see a wet spot and then i'll take a look at where those dents were again and they've pretty much popped right up i'll run a piece of sandpaper over it to see how it is and if i need to go again [Music] here so it looks pretty good but i think i'm going to do one more steam because i can feel that they're just popping up a little bit so i'll just get right on to the areas that have the dents still i don't have to do the whole thing again that's where most of them are right there and then i'll just come along again with my iron yes i think that's pretty good i think these were all the really dented in areas i can't even feel them now and i'll do a little bit more sanding for sure this one is up too i just need to sand it a little bit more but that looks good so that's a good method for getting some dents out of something that you don't want to sand too much or just anything so i'll keep sanding this and got these two or the door and a couple two drawers here to uh strip and then these drawers here to strip left on the cabinet and then of course the rest of the the cabinet face and base and all that kind of stuff so we'll keep stripping away okay guys so i've got a uh base all prepared here for new veneer this is the whole area that we glued down here and everything is nice and solid now but there was this piece missing and there was actually a lot of damage to this area and had chipped away so i used some epoxy putty to repair the base because you got to have something to to glue your epoxy down to it needs to be a pretty good substrate so epoxy putty works pretty good for that so i've got this edge um i usually just put a straight edge on the veneer and i cut right down to make a nice straight triangular shape to insert veneer and just made sure that all the old glue was off of this you know like a little file is really good for making sure that surface is clean and i usually under cut my edge that i'm meeting by just kind of shaving it off with the edge of the utility knife just to make sure there's not something that's pushing up against it now to repair this piece i'm going to be using edge tape which i find really handy to use on these small repairs and this is a piece of walnut i don't have any uh mahogany which is fine because i'm gonna be staining this to match anyways so uh i can definitely make this look like it's supposed to and the grain is pretty much identical so i'm just going to be using edge tape and ironing it down and then shaving it off and and that'll be the repair it's the easiest kind of repair to do um the other way to do it is just to get a piece of veneer that you want and to cut it out to shape and have it up here and glue it with a different method like high glue but i'm just going to iron this on and it's going to stick pretty quick this is a nice method if you've just got a little tiny repair and you can just iron it right on and you're done and you can get to sanding and shaping it and it's all done so as long as you've got a good i'm just gonna press it up against that edge so the seam is as small as i can get it good and that's how easy it is it's all stuck so now i can cut this away here quite stuck right there and then i like to use a file to just put the edge right off um good and then i'll just take my iron and make sure that that seam is all the way down and that little point get it all glued down around the edges really good awesome so then i'll grab some 120 paper [Music] and sand the seam here just a little bit of a height difference [Music] there you can see it's all glued down it's a good seam there happy with that and uh nice and smooth so now we just need to match the color of course we just need to strip this whole area here got it all glued down everywhere so it's all firm i don't hear any more double taps anyway good so we'll continue working on stripping everything down here and this whole edge actually needs a pretty good sand a bunch of glue that we got everywhere so it was all glued down so probably give this base a pretty good sand but it's all firm and and looking good all our corner blocks are dry now and they're the base is feeling a lot more sturdy so it's good so we'll just continue stripping and prepping the piece all right guys so i've got this thing stripped down to the level that i need to get it to before applying the stain it's all sanded with the sander and then hand sanded with 180. so just starting with the top molding i'm using gowdy's brown cherry to match the color here it's a pretty nice stain so i'm just going to brush it on work it into the molding everywhere here all that lovely dental molding that we scrubbed [Music] hard to hold the camera while you do things i'll just work in sections here so grab a rag and wipe it off i don't mind if it stays a little heavier in the grooves just kind of gives it a nice glazed effect so there you can see that beautiful mahogany again all right so i'm just gonna do that to the whole thing and the doors and the drawers and the lattice work got the other one in progress here got a friend helping me so should have these two stained and ready for lacquer by the end of tomorrow perhaps all right i'll keep you updated all right so working on these corner china cabinets this one is completely prepped and stained and drying and waiting to go to the booth you can see the color difference here this is just in the raw but also we're getting a little bit deeper of a color when we go in because the interior is the original color so when we put the clear coat on the brown cherry it really does pop a little bit warmer in the red orange kind of zone so you'll see that when we're doing clear coats so we're just finishing up the prep here and got everything sanded here and pretty much ready for staining on the workbench and i'm just gonna do a bit more putting there's some damage up on top crayon molding right there that i'm gonna do some putty work on a little bit more cleaning up and then just keep sanding everything until we get it in stains so we're nearing the the end of these guys there have been a ton of work so i'm glad for that but uh it's going well so i'll keep you posted all right good morning guys it's trina john's furniture repair so last night i finally got my hole saw for drilling the holes for my little puck lights that i'm putting into these tiny cabins so this was fifty dollars but whatever so i just wanted to double check the size before i make a big tiny or a big hole in the and that's looking pretty good so it's a little bit bigger than the base of this which is fine because it's got these spring tabs that are gonna um when you pop it in it's just gonna be against these spring tabs here so basically what i need to do now i've already marked out where i'm going to be drilling them and what i'm going to do is take a just a brad point smaller drill bit and start a pilot hole right there so i know that i'm exactly where i need to be and then i'll drill a big hole with the giant drill bit so let me get set up and i'll show you guys how we do it [Music] [Music] so [Music] all right so we're almost through to the top you can see just about an eighth of an inch left to go up here so i'm gonna now come from the top down all right so we're going to come from the top down nice and slow by the way my drill is special it needs a new chuck there's our hole now we can check to see how the uh pot light fix in there nice perfect fit any smaller and that wouldn't have been good and i measured for a little bit bigger just because i know those tabs don't bend all the way against the side of it okay guys now that i've vacuumed all the sawdust out of my bra for the most part i've got these done and uh they look pretty good they're even look like they're lights without lights in them which i thought was funny but it worked out pretty good you got nice clean holes no tear out whatsoever always helps when you have a nice sharp bit so i'm pleased with that and i can finish up getting everything ready to go i'm excited to get these finished with because working on uh rounded things is kind of difficult stripping and all that kind of stuff so i'm happy that these are almost done plus they're way overdue so i'll get back to work and get some color on this guy and we'll float it over to the booth [Music] all right so we got both of these guys under stain and they've been drying for a day so they're ready for their first first coats of lacquer and everything here is ready as well it's been drying overnight so i'm gonna line everything up and get a couple coats of lacquer on it to sit overnight the hardware's got a shine on it so we just need to put a bit of lacquer on that as well just to seal in that brass and get everything moving so let me get at it [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] so so i'm just working on uh getting these guys under coat i've got two coats of lacquer on everything and i'm just going to be doing a little bit of color touch up with these pieces not a lot because the stain did a pretty good job of getting it exactly where i wanted it but i'm using just a little bit of mohawk's brown cherry tint um just to hit places that are a little bit light so i don't know if you can see from there i can bring you guys a little closer when i'm looking at this piece here i'm noticing just you know the ribbons are a little light right in the front here the tops these are a little bit washed out so what i'm going to do is just take my brown cherry corners and i don't want to do a lot i just want to kind of hit it just to give it a little bit of thickness just in the areas that need a little bit of color and that molding underneath right in the front and this would be where you know the sun hit the piece and the patina of the wood is a little lighter in those areas and that'll happen again over time which is fine i just want to kind of even everything out i'm going to give a little bit of color to this shelf and then up here as well on the crown molding it's kind of the same thing so i just want to hit the mostly the middle and wherever else i see needs a little bit of color so i'm just going to go over these pieces and all the doors and pieces as well and just make sure that things are not sticking out as too light it was a little bit of the brown cherry and then probably another two more coats of lacquer and hopefully they'll uh be looking good so i'll finish up with that all right so there's about five coats of lacquer on these guys they look pretty good doors too got that grain filled look at that mahogany pot looks good so last thing i need to do is seal the inside of the doors or sorry drawers and put it all back together so i'm just gonna put a coat of lacquer on the inside in the booth and get to installing glass and hinges and stops and lights and all kinds of stuff so i'll get at it the good furniture maker of hestler and ontario made canadian furniture awesome stuff okay everything is back installed on these cabinets both of them working with rounded glass makes me pretty nervous because it's so hard to replace but it's all in there we've got the wooden slats behind the glass like they should be uh we've got the interior of the drawers sealed all the hinges are in the right place which is a little hard because i found out there was two different types of hinges on one cabinet than the other we've got the glass shelves installed here and the lights are installed as well i'll turn them on here so you guys can see so i chose two lights so it's pretty bright in there and you get everything all full it'll be good i'm really happy with how these turned looks a little washed out in there when the sun is shining but it looks good when i close the doors and show you how it looks with those closed really nice and bright in there so people display stuff but yeah i'm really happy with how these turned out and i'm really happy that they're done so next week they can go back home and [Music] they can enjoy them for with their rest their dining suite so thanks for joining me on this one guys and don't forget to like and subscribe and check out our other videos that we do in the shop here you

Channel: John's Furniture Repair

Views: 21,724

Rating: 4.9694915 out of 5

Keywords: trena, john's furniture repair, refinishing, stripping, stripper, strip, cabinet, china cabinet, woodworking, workshop, furniture, carpentry, antiques, refinish

Id: ip-d__g1a8Q

Length: 52min 47sec (3167 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 26 2021