Walnut dining set refinish, reupholstering 7 chairs

hi guys it's trina from john's furniture repair and starting a new giant project in the shop today and it is this dining room set it's really beautiful uh it's a walnut set and it's a family heirloom one of my customers and we're going to be doing a complete makeover on this set so we're going for a darker color and everything needs uh repair and blooming and lots of prep work so she's got a buffet a table with uh four legs and a pedestal with two legs and then seven chairs now two of the chairs are not original you can kind of see that the original chairs have this beautiful little crescent design and these two guys are the odd ones out so they're just oak chairs that she uses with the set so she needs those for extra seating so we'll stain them up to match we're also going to be reupholstering the seats because they're looking like they need it they are definitely going to get some new foam because this is not comfy and make them look all nice and cushy and nice to sit in all these chairs are coming all the way apart they're really loose joints are wobbly that way we can deal with anything that needs some addressing the table is in really nice shape actually it's looking like it had a refinish at some point but we're going to be changing the color up so that's going to get a complete refinish as well and the buffet is in really great shape as well a little bit of of the doors are sticking and doing some stuff but we'll take care of that the drawer down here uh needs some work it's kind of not stopping where it should so probably need stops and maybe a drawer bottom issue inside i think we're pretty good we're just going to leave that all natural and and take care of everything else but basically just a complete strip refinish repair and get it back to something that she wants it to be in her house and they're actually building a new house so they wanted this piece to be uh part of their new house so that's kind of cool so anyways let's uh i think i'm going to start on the chairs first because they always take me the longest and there are seven of them so i'm gonna start digging into chairs getting seats off and taking them apart and stripping down so let's get at it okay so i've got the first one up on the workbench here i'm gonna start with turning it over and taking the seat off so it looks like just four screws [Applause] i can see these have all been worked on before i'm also going to take off these uh bumps right here further see so i don't get pulled stripper i actually don't mind this style of fudge of glider it's a lot better than some of the other ones around there it's just a piece of rubber that you screw onto the bottom of your foot stays in place it's a soft rubber doesn't wreck floors that's kind of nice i should maybe get a few of these [Applause] i'll keep them in good shape and we can reuse them on the chairs okay so now that that's off i'm just going to number the chair seat and the chair so this will be number one and then i can put this seat aside so next up quarter blocks gotta come out so i'll label those as well as sorry front right back right back left front left and then we'll take all the screws out of the quarterbacks okay so now that i've got all the fasteners out of the chair i'm going to start to hit this apart with a mallet this one's pretty tight so i'm hoping i can get it loose because i do like to strip these when they're apart and i don't like all the glue around these joints but if it's going to be a major problem because i can almost see some epoxy type glue then i'll just have to strip this one together but i'm going to try to give it a few whacks and see if it does move for me yes i'm getting some movement there so i think i will coerce it apart on this one maybe not that one [Music] a lot of glue dripped down from some repair and it's definitely a very hard glue we'll just keep working at it here we go it's a really messy glue job where there's a gap in the joint and because it wasn't clamped when it was drying with the glue and so i really did want to get that apart it seems kind of harsh but so i'm going to check if i need to take it apart this way there aren't too many huge gaps i can get away with it staying together like this yeah i think i might leave it together the back together and the front still has these gaps in the joints that i don't really like so i'm going to try to get those apart and i'm going to go to my rubber mat so i can bounce it off of the floor mat and get a little bit of help that way [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] okay so i've got the last two of these original chairs in clamps and those three over there are all prepped and ready for stain so i'm working on these two uh odd chairs the oak ones and i've got the seat off here it's just over there it's a different style seat as well and these look like they're in pretty rough shape they're really loose i'm gonna be making some new corner blocks um looks like this uh rung was replaced at some point because that is not oak that's walnuts and uh i don't know if it belonged to a different set could have been one of the other chairs i don't know it's just weird that there's one walnut rung here so this is all gonna get taken apart because it's super in need of help this one is the same thing uh they're just really dirty and loose and the seats are gross and looks like this one has all its original parts for the most that i can see so let's get this guy apart okay so i've got everything stripped here and just going through the pieces it's apparent that not everything is uh original you can see here um this piece here was definitely made after uh one of the pieces went missing or something you can see a lot of the really um rough jagged saw marks and just the dowels here which are really roughly cut and uh there's a ton of glue and and stuff jammed to make them fit so they're a really rough fit so i'm gonna have to do some work to get these to fit properly again and definitely use an epoxy but other than that they're really roughly sanded you can see all of the little swirl marks and this is on a good side like you should definitely not have that on a piece so i am gonna have to use a sander to start with the sanding but like every piece that i do with a power sander i'm gonna be sanding it with a piece of sandpaper by hand afterwards to straighten out any little swirlies that the machine leaves so these pieces here are going to need that pretty heavily that's the h brace on the bottom and then there's a couple of really bad repairs um i'm not sure what's going on here at this piece the dowels were pretty shallow and then they were drilled out at some point and at an angle so it doesn't look like you know there there's new holes drilled in the end piece and this looks like an original piece it's a quarter-sawn piece of oak and i just think that these were drilled out again at a really bad angle so i can kind of see half of the original dowel that's still stuck in the bottom there and so they've just drilled them at a really weird angle so i'm going to have to get that out and fill these here and uh with with new dowels i'm gonna pop those in and then just do a fill on the top here um and let that harden and then i can you know do a touch-up on that area after okay so i've got all of these stained with the brown mahogany gowdy stain this is just a chair that i'm also working on it's not part of the scent so here's how the oak ones look same similar color just a little bit different undertone so yeah everything's fixed pre-glued lots of new corner blocks lots of repairs to broken legs and joints and so these will dry overnight and then we'll get them in the booth hey guys it's been a busy couple weeks in the shop and i haven't taken any videos so i just want to do a big update in here to show you what we've had going on and uh update you on that dining room set that we're working on so let me show you what we've been doing well first of all i've got all of the chairs under lacquer ready to go just need the seats reupholstered and i will be done with these guys so these ones got a full refinish re-glue restoration and they've got the beautiful brown mahogany stain from gowdy and three coats of lacquer so they are all done and ready to go looking great just sitting there waiting for me in the meantime i kind of got busy with a couple other things uh these couple of tables got a full refinish they were just in a little bit of rough shape but just a refinish back to the originals so those cute little tables are a nice set to go home now and along with those my customer also had this piece so we stripped all the little detail and fixed all the damage and uh gave it a nice refinish as well so that's ready to go now we refinished this chair here for a customer who we did uh 12 other chairs for so that one's going home uh today and uh we also did this whole set so the table got a full refinish on this guy and these guys we just refinished the backs and uh did touch ups on the rest and did a full locker over there the whole thing and we also did the arms on the captain's chair so just kind of a freshen up for this set it was generally in good shape and didn't need to re-glue on the chairs or anything just a little bit grimy and needing a cleanup so that's actually going out in uh an hour so so that's ready to go and then the table here for the sets that we're working on with this light on here uh is got four coats of lacquer and i'm gonna sand it down and do a fifth but it's looking really beautiful some of the most beautiful walnut that i've ever seen is on this set so really really nice color coming through that brown mahogany stain and uh we've got all the legs and everything we finished as well so just a really really pretty table so right now what i'm working on is the last piece for this set it's the buffets i've got the top getting stripped here um the rest needs to be stripped did some work on building a new drawer slide down here that was missing and putting in some stops and then also uh re-gluing the the slides down here the drawer itself needed some work on the guides and the slides as well and we've got a few pieces stripped already here on the workbench some pretty detail on the doors so really just beautiful walnut that i'm working with here so it's always nice to work with that so i'm going to keep working on stripping this guy down and sanding it and getting it ready for the booth so we can uh get everything back to my customer eventually now the other couple of things that we've got going on that aren't finished are these uh tables they've got leather tops we ordered new leather tops the old ones are back there they had holes in them burn marks and stuff so they are uh in the cleanup stage right now they were stripped and they need some some work to get cleaned up still [Music] so [Music] [Music] so [Music] okay guys now that the top has been stripped i just want to show you the shape it's in it's got a ton of stains here that i'm going to try to get out with oxtalic they're kind of all over the place and quite a bit of scratches and dents and nicks so it's just in really bad shape the first thing i'm going to do is steam it just with some water and iron and then i'm going to give it a pretty good sanding might do two rounds of the steaming just we'll see how it turns out and then after the steaming i'll do the oxalic if these are still here after the sanding sometimes that takes most of it out so we'll start there [Music] [Music] i really want these like cross green scratches for lips big uh denser holes are a lot easier to hide than a cross-grain scratch so that's what i really want to come up the table is also in really bad shape [Music] so let me get this as well as the table okay so that's got it the process also brings up a lot of finish that we didn't get off with the stripping process so i'll just scrape the surface to get off those nibs and then we're going to hit it with the 120 on the sander i'm going to grab a card scraper [Music] okay so that's got everything sanded down to 120. unfortunately we did not get lucky and these uh major stains are still here and kind of speckled everywhere so let's mix up some oxalic acid okay so i just got some hot tap water here and my crystals i'm just gonna open this up and get a scoop [Music] i'm not very measured with my oxalic crystals just kind of put a scoop into this jar seems to work but you do want to use hot water just so you can dissolve the crystals nicely so about that much just going to pop it in there give it a stir it's all dissolved [Music] then i'm just going to soak down the entire top you don't want to do a spot when you're doing a big surface like this just if you have one stain because it will lighten the wood around the spot as well so you're best off to seeing the whole surface [Music] and this doesn't always work but usually if it's a mineral stain it'll come up and that looks like it's disappearing right before my eyes [Music] and that needs to dry but i'll just show you guys a closer up view of what's going on so we have that really dark stain right there and it's really fading out quite nicely there were a couple other spots these ones here i'm waiting to kind of see what they're gonna do but this has to completely dry and crystallize before i'll see the full effect of the acid on the spots and that was the one i was most concerned about and i think that's going to be pretty much gone so everything's kind of evening out to a nice tone so we'll have to sand this again after we rinse it off with water you have to scrub it off pretty good because there's acid crystals on it afterwards so we'll scrub that off with water let it dry again for a day and then uh sand it with 180. so in the meantime we'll get to stripping the rest of the cabinet okay so it's all dried and crystallized now so i'm going to scrub it off with just water and i've got a pail of water here and a scrubby and i'll just wipe it off i'll have to rinse it usually it's nice to turn these on their side and rinse them off but it's a fairly big piece i'm just going to scrub and do lots of rinses with my rag so i'll just get water in here and start scrubbing those crystals off i'm really happy with how the stains came out pretty much all of them did not really seeing any of them here so that was definitely worth the effort which is always nice [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] all right so all of the pieces are stained so they'll need to dry and uh it's a humidity humidity index of over 70 right now so we won't be spraying this week but the sky can sit and dry turned out pretty nice i did a stain on the inside as well so i'll just give that a clear coat inside and that's good so we'll cart it over to the booth and get going with clear coats when the weather clears okay so while everything is drying you can get to upholstering these seats so i've got a piece a slab of two inch high definite foam and i'm going to want to kind of go over the edge of this so i'm going to turn these upside down and just line it up with the edge each of these has their own special shape because they're handmade so i don't want to use the same one to cut all of my seats and some of the boards are like this so these are the two oak chairs and then all of these new boards were made for those walnut chairs and i'm just going to trace out where each chair i know five of these fit here so i'll just start with the one i don't need to do the front edge because it's straight and i'm just gonna trace it so that's a little bit bigger so i can get some edge coverage for one and then i've numbered all the chair seats so i'm just going to put the number of which piece of foam goes with which chair on each piece so i'll do the next one and line it right up with that edge that's number six so i'll mark all these out and i'll show you how we cut them that going so i'm going to put it out the whole um length of the width of the foam it's really easy when you've got a nice sharp knife i'm just gonna keep my leg as short as straight as i can down i'm gonna actually lengthen it a little bit so i get a whole a nice crisp edge no power tools needed and these are the chunks i give people and they forget their furniture blankets when they come pick up their stuff so i keep them in a bag and then they eventually get used up they don't do bolstering a whole bunch i usually leave it up to the actual holsters but when i'm doing a whole dining room like this and the chair seats are in need of repulsor i don't mind okay so this is dapron and i use this for softening the edges and shaping the seat before the fabric goes on so i'll just take the last seated here and this is the number one foam and i'm going to position this so it's a little bit heavy on all the sides i'm gonna go get my spray glue and i'm just going to peel this off first and i'll just be very easy on the glue i'm gonna position that there and i mean these don't shift around a whole lot that's just to kind of keep it there while i'm working on it and i don't want it walking on a customer so that'll take this i'm just i'm going to be stretching this pretty heavily so i don't need a lot of room and i don't want to waste again so i'm just going to go pretty close to the edge and maybe leave about an inch and a half all the way around just enough so i can stretch it around so i want to pull it tight but not too too tight because this stuff isn't structural so that'll do and i'll just cut it here at an angle just like my foam and i'll turn this after so what i'm going to do now is get my staple gun i'm just going to attack all four edges first so i'll start here right in the center and here i'm kind of using my hand just to bring it on over so there's not one little tight spot so the tension is kind of even i'm not a professional poster by teams so this is just what's worked for me and good so now we've got our piece tacked on there and the comb is attached so now i'll just work a few more i'm not going to staple a lot with the dacron just want to get the general shape down before we start working with the fabric so when i'm looking i want my edge to be even with my first tension and i'm kind of squishing that foam so that it's up around the uh plywood edge it's kind of coming down there now let's go right to the end and leave you know space in between that's not a big deal because we're going to be putting the fabric over and doing a lot more staples there so i'm not going to freak out on staples right now do the opposite edge just using my hand to kind of push the foam down and around to make that nice shape and then work the other side good so you look up here got a nice even shape that pulls those edges down and kind of rounds off the foam and does the work before you start pulling around with uh patterns and getting your your fabric on there so for the edges i just pull them really tightly up against themselves tack it and that's it i'm not going to make a corner or anything this stuff kind of shapes to the edge if you've got sharp corners on your plywood you might want to round them off before you start doing all this but this one wasn't too bad here but some of them i should but i'll kind of play that as i go i'm just going to pull all these corners in and background just makes the making the shape of the piece a lot easier adds a little bit of um cushioning as well and just kind of softens any little depths or whatever so now that's all there we'll take our scissors and i always keep a good pair of scissors around for doing stuff like this ones that i don't open a can with or something and just trim it as close to those staples as i can i don't want a lot of bulk with this stuff so this stuff here you know it's just gonna get smushed down like does compress pretty good but you can even kind of shave it off from the top that way just so you're not adding extra bulk to the corners if this was a chair that had to fit into a frame or something that would be a little bit more important you just sit on top so that's not good so there you go here's your beginning stage before you get your fabric going so i've got six more of these guys to do like this and then we'll get to uh putting the fabric on so let me get out that first okay so now that i've got everything covered in dacron i've got the fabric here laid out and when you're working with a fabric that's not got a pattern this isn't a big deal but when you have something like this where there's you know kind of an obvious center to a lot of it sometimes you want to try to center it on if it's possible this piece and we do have a lot of the fabric so i'm thinking i'm going to try that i'll have to lay it out and make sure i have enough to do this but these sections here i've got like a bouquet of flowers kind of suctioned everywhere so i'd have to probably skip a whole section and i'd only be able to get two out of this whole piece but i think she's got enough fabric here to uh center with so i think i'm gonna try to do that because this section right here seems to be where the pattern would be nice if all the chairs had that bouquet right on the seat so i'm thinking something like that probably look pretty good okay so i've got all the pieces cut out and i've been working through a few of them so i'll just show you how we uh get everything centered and how we do our corners i'm just going to trim off a little bit of this excess because we can't use the middle of the pattern because we want to center this piece here so we're wasting a little bit more when we center patterns but it'll be nice having the same emblem on every chair so what i'm doing is just i've got a few points of reference um this piece here is supposed to be on the corner uh this flower is supposed to kind of be in this upper corner this stem here is supposed to be coming off the corner there so i'm just kind of centering everything based on that there's supposed to be you know space here these are supposed to be these stems are supposed to be in the middle ish i'm not trying to get it perfect because it is kind of an erratic pattern but once i've kind of got it positioned to where i think it's supposed to be okay so i've got the piece centered on here where i want so what i'm going to do is just kind of hold it in place here and flip it over keeping the tension where my hands were and i'm just going to give it a tack use my hand again as a smooth over and i'll do it to all four sides first good then i'll just recheck it with one that i'm doing here i want my pattern to be the same this is the uh arm chair so it's a little bit bigger so it'll be a little different but in general it looks the same you know we've got the flower up here in the corner these pieces are coming down the center we've got a piece coming in this side so that looks good so what i'm going to do is work with the back first because it's a little short the way i had to cut it on the pattern and when i'm bringing my hand around the side i'm actually going to be pulling it towards the center because i don't want to be left with a ton of material on my corners so i'm going to actually bring my hand over and kind of flex the material back to the center so i'm going to start tacking it that way and you can see there's you know a little bit of bunch of material here so we'll just kind of work that material smooth i don't have a lot a big edge to work with here so that's good same thing i'll do on the other side so that tack here is where our center point is and we're just going to pull everything into that center so again i'm just going to move my hand in the center like that start tacking just kind of spread out those wrinkles a little bit so there that's your first edge there so then i'm gonna go to the opposite side and do the same thing and this is the front [Music] okay so that's the front edge there so you want to put a staple along every inch of this piece you don't want to have a space these uh woven fabrics you need to pull every fiber the same or you're gonna see it on your uh on your piece it's gonna definitely be noticeable that you don't have a staple somewhere so i'm just gonna work the two sides the same way and i'll show you how to do the corner okay so i've got one corner done here this is on another chair seat and i've just got ready to go and i'm not going for a fold i'm going for a clean corner and uh trying to get as flat and smooth as i can so i can sit right on the chair seat like that so i'll show you how i do it so once we've pulled that fabric into the center there's less to deal with here in the corner in the first place that's your first tip for getting a good corner like this and then when i pull it down it takes some working but you're just gonna kind of tightly bring it around the corner so that your folds are underneath not on the chair seat itself so i'm going to tack my front edge first then i'm going to try to smooth out this lump on the side here a little bit more until i like it and then i'm going to bring it around and i'm going because i don't want a lump here because it's got to sit on the seat i'm going to kind of fan it out looks like i need to just tack this a little bit one more right here and keep everything tight right up to that corner and then you're just going to have this tab that pulls in kind of a fashion like that and there you are so you've got that corner a bit of a point that i could have probably taken off but it looks good so we've got no fold just a clean corner to sit on the chairs and i'll show you guys what it's looking like on the chair pretty done here here's the old walnut chair the seat is fairly plush so it's a big poopy seat it's what the customer wanted so it looks a little bit more um in line with this chair it's a little bit more of a beefy chair this oak chair they look a little big on these ones but they're going to be a good comfortable seat and the height with the table is actually perfect so they're really supportive and uh they're easy to get in and out of and they they're nice to sit in so i'm gonna keep working we've got uh two almost done on the the workbench that i showed you guys we were working on so we should be done these seats today and then we're just waiting for the weather to clear up uh to finish spraying the table and the buffet so i'll keep working with these guys okay i just wanted to show you how i finished it off too so i got all the corners there on this one so i'm going to trim off not like super close to the staples just about leaving about a half inch ish emphasis on the ish okay and then once that is all off this is not a necessary step but i feel like it makes it look a lot more professional and just finished off and done because this is all you know raw edge and you see your dacron and everything so i just take some dust cover and cut out with leaving about an inch around the inside of the chair funny shape and what i do is fold this edge under and i tuck all those raw ends of the material underneath [Applause] and just give it a few tacks definitely not as many as you would on the fabric because we're not pulling anything tight here or trying to keep it we're just trying to clean up this bottom edge good and then that looks pretty good if you've got any stag you can just pop up oh this thing a staple right in the middle so maybe cats don't want to get at it too so that finishes off nicely and then we can just pop it on our chair take off all the fuzzies and kind of center it nicely on the chair these are all not original seats so i'm just trying to play with the positioning to get the best that i can and when you uh screw these seats down you want to suck it right close to that frame so you don't have this gap here you're seeing sometimes i can be a little tough that's why i want to keep it mostly um try to keep it mostly flat when you're working with it [Applause] just as much as it will compress everything down there [Music] good just give it a look to make sure it's sitting on there nicely and that looks really good so the last thing we're doing for these chairs and i do let this on a lot of pieces that i do is adding these neoprene gliders and they just are friendly to all floor types and they don't have an adhesive which you know once it falls off it gets floor all sticky just got to go kind of off center of the old hole here gives you a chance to look if you have anything that you missed [Music] good so that chair is done nice fabric for these pieces so i got three left to do and then we're done with these guys [Music] so [Music] all right so it is finished and headed out this morning so let's go over everything and i'll give you a closer look so we finished the buffet last and got all the hardware back on and cleaned everything i did a hand buffed finish on the top so they're really nicely smooth same thing with the table did a hand buffed finish on the table as well so it's got a nice soft sheen and it's just so so smooth feels so luxurious uh so we did the uh repairs on the drawer that was the major thing on this one so we've got an all new drawer slide in there so that's working really nicely now stopping where it should other than that the repairs are pretty minimal to this thing just a nice refinish in the brown mahogany and the table we did some repairs to the legs but mostly it was just a straight refinish in the brow mahogany and then all the chairs got rebuilt refinished and the seats were recovered with a two inch foam so very plush very luxurious this set's going to be really comfortable to be at for those long lovely dinners with lots of wine so thanks for joining me on this one guys i'm excited to give it back to the customer and get her reaction i think she'll really like it i think it turned out really good and uh don't forget to like and subscribe and if you like these videos check out some other stuff we have and we'll always be adding more so take care you

Channel: John's Furniture Repair

Views: 77,664

Rating: 4.9611921 out of 5

Keywords: upholstery, furniture repair, antiques, dining set, table, china cabinet, shop, workshop, woodworking, trena, thomas johnson, stain, staining, stripping, stripper, spray booth

Id: F_RZRwsAqd0

Length: 59min 50sec (3590 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 18 2021