Red Oak Dining Table Refinish

This old red oak table was quite a mess when it arrived.

It was stored in a damp garage for years leaving it filthy. Boards in the top had separated as the old glue gave out so the top was in numerous pieces when it arrived.

You can see the difference in color when we first sanded half of the top. That new wood color is almost always hiding under the ruined finishes on these antique pieces.

We stained it a nice medium brown (Minwax Honey if memory serves correctly). Out of that seemingly destroyed old wreck came this finished beauty. It is all solid oak, no veneers, so it ought to be good for another century.

Furniture Repair: Fire & Water Damage

This dining room set was nearly ruined in a house fire.

We completely repaired and restored this oak dining table and chairs, considerably damaged in a house fire.

Fire and Water Damaged Furniture

When we received this dining table and chairs from the restoration crew, one end of the table was broken off by the collapse of a water soaked ceiling and insulation. Three of the chairs were so water damaged that the seats fell apart into multiple pieces. Water had literally washed/soaked away about a third of the finishes on this dining set. The baby chair had a leg burned black at the lower end. It was in rough shape.

Refinishing this dining set, however, is exactly the kind of challenge we enjoy! There is always something satisfying about being able to strip and refinish a large dining table. The transformation is pretty fun to see.

Refinishing and Repair Techniques

The chair seats were broken into several pieces and had to be re-glued, sanded smooth, and refinished.

One chair had a rung missing so I had our favorite wood turner custom make one to match the existing rungs. We installed the new custom rung and when the project was complete you would never know one rung had been replaced.

Once we get to spraying the professional finish on table tops, one of the things I like to do to make the finish shine is to spray on two or three coats of sanding sealer, instead of just one coat, before I apply any top clear coats. Sanding sealer in multiple layers gives the table top finish some nice depth.

In the end this restored and refinished dining set turned out great, and should be good for a few decades or at least until the next house fire.

Why I Train Furniture Refinishing Apprentices

Here at Old Virginia Woodworking I do not hire laborers or carpenters I hire apprentices. There is a world of difference in my opinion. Typically when business owners hire people it is to fill a need for the business. That is true here as well but I have other motivations too.

I believe God has prepared me for such a day as this. Having worked in the building trades for 48 years God has been gracious to let me learn a great deal about building and woodworking. It is only by His gracious provision and kind providence that I have gained my skills. That providence has also helped me to own and provision a good sized shop full of modern tools and equipment.

My Dream Job – Woodworking & Furniture Refinishing

Here I am in my later years working on what many tradesmen would call their dream projects. We refinish a wide variety of furniture pieces. Some are quite nice antiques. We also build some new pieces and make custom moldings for restoration work. I often reflect on the kindness of God in allowing me to work on these desirable projects.

I realize there are numbers of guys around who would love to do the kind of work we do here and would be greatly blessed to have that opportunity. I have decided I ought to (to quote a famous Person) give as it has been given to me and give other guys a chance to learn what I have learned. Hence my commitment to train apprentices in refinishing and woodworking.

Suspender Man™ showing off the door project progress — Suspender Man™ showing off custom door project progress.

Working at My Calling

This is work I believe God has given me to do. It is right here in front of me. I do not have to go to Africa or any third world country (though I greatly respect those who do) in order to fulfill my calling. I can walk just 300 feet down to my shop and do some kind of good for Christ’s kingdom without moving anywhere or driving a single mile.

Given the moral decay and philosophical and spiritual collapse of the university systems and the general lack of trade school opportunities the need has never been greater for apprenticeship training. This idea of apprenticeships was a part of old Christendom that has been bypassed and forgotten for over a century.

Many people have heard the word apprentice but have no real, meaningful content for that concept. I am trying to revive an old idea that I believe is both biblically sound and useful in our time. I am doing something new by imitating something old. True, Christian apprenticeship involves more than just learning trade skills. It involves teaching and learning an entire worldview to go with the trade skills. This is what makes Christian apprenticeship Christian and it is why I am determined to train Christian apprentices. May God give me the grace to succeed to His glory.

Rebuild and Restoration of Hoosier Cabinet

Restoring a Hoosier Cabinet

When we restore and refurbish an old cabinet like this we can get into a wide variety of work. If the cabinet was made after about 1920 or so it could have cheap veneer plywood sides, bottom, and back.

These plywood panels soak up humidity or direct water from rain or other sources. Then the glue lets go between the veneers and the entire piece needs to be replaced. Sometimes you can simply remove the outer layer of the plywood and replace that layer with new veneer. An old iron can help. You use it to heat up the layer of peeling veneer and the heat softens the glue, and bingo, off comes the old veneer.

The new veneer has to be cut with care using a pattern. Then use contact cement to glue down the new veneer. It may sound hard but it is really easy. This Sellers cabinet is really just a variety of Hoosier cabinets but it was a cheap knock off made mostly of poplar wood, a wood which needs to be painted for It rarely looks good stained and varnished.

The best way to get the roll top desk to roll properly is, simply, to work it repeatedly until all the hidden paint crumbs break loose and the track clears enough to let the top move properly.

Don’t be afraid to try it and restore your Hoosier or Sellers Cabinet to its former glory!

Completing the Restoration of a Hoosier Cabinet

The first video we posted up above shows you know how tough this cabinet looked when we began. It was literally falling into parts on the floor. One of our most helpful products for restoring old, broken furniture is epoxy adhesive. Epoxy is tremendously strong, plus, you can add silica thickener to make it stay in the glue joints and not drool all over. Epoxy is a good filler/adhesive and fills up where broken bits of wood have gone missing.

Another trick that gets the job done faster is to use a good commercial paint stripper. Now that might sound like a bit overboard but if you ever try to use the hardware store products, well, you will be there for days with frustration to the moon. We use Benco brand paint stripper, and use rubber gloves, apron, and eye protection. Of course I can’t talk you into anything you just have to decide how many hours you want to spend to strip a cabinet.

Once cleaned up you should sand the cabinet. If you are going to paint your Hoosier Cabinet then prime it first and sand the primer. Then apply two coats of a high quality paint and, voila, you will have discovered a new hobby — or maybe discovered why people bring their furniture to guys like us for refinishing.

What’s the deal with milk paint anyway?

A Look at Milk Paint

Our experience with removing milk paint has been revealing. We bought what was supposed to be a great, potent commercial milk paint removal product. Nevertheless it took around 15 hours to clean up this door.

I try to help our readers discover tricks and training for their own home projects. But I have no good advice for stripping milk paint except: Do Not Waste Your Time!

Milk paint is chemically different from all other paints. It has a chalky look but is often hidden under other types of paint.

I have raised my price for stripping painted doors from $250 each to $1,000 each. Nobody will hire us to strip doors at that price, which is great. We are going to concentrate on other things. Good riddance to the milk paint doors.

Tim’s Hurry Up Pew Stain Job

Staining Techniques

This was a fun little video to make. You can see all the energy and movement required to stain a piece of furniture. To get great stain work you have to be careful and thorough.

There are a variety of techniques to use when applying stains.

Sometimes we brush on the stain and do not back wipe it at all. In that case the brush out of the wood stain must be meticulously even. You cannot leave visible brush marks but you are trying to leave a thin layer of stain laying on the surface of the wood.

Other times we wipe or brush the stain on and then use a rag to rub down the surface. This lightens the surface to a more glowing presentation. Stains can be intermixed to obtain the color you want and they can be thinned to reduce pigment concentration as well. Just thin with whatever the can says to use for that purpose – paint thinner for oil based stains and water for latex stains.

I do not recommend dye stains for amateur use.

Staining a Curio Cabinet Darker

Curio Cabinet Quandaries

Staining Furniture Darker

Refinishing furniture is a big part of what we do. With this curio cabinet the owners wanted the wood to be darker. We can almost always make wood darker. Making wood lighter is another situation. Typically, dark wood has been coated with oil stain that is soaked into, not unto, the wood surface. Once saturated with the dark color it is nearly impossible to remove that dark stain. I never guarantee we can lighten a dark piece.

Be Careful with the Glass!

An unrelated danger with refinishing a piece like this is the possibility that you might crack or break one of the several curved glass panels. Those panels will be expensive to replace. You have to figure the cost to replace even a small curved glass panel will be upwards of $500 with larger panels being substantially more. We have recently decided to refuse work on any piece of furniture with curved glass panels or doors.

As with any business there are plenty of land mines to avoid and lessons to learn. We do, however, know we are blessed to work on the many and varied projects people bring us. We refinish and repair a great many pieces every year. In the process I try to instill excellent skills and Christian ethics in my apprentice(s). I want them to be skilled, honest, and wise workers in an old fashioned trade.

Is the Customer ALWAYS Right?

When they accuse you—maybe falsely

This story is a hard experience for me. I am upset at both myself and my customer, and his customer. I typed the heading on this report a week ago. It used to read When They Accuse You Falsely. Now I have added the Maybe. I know a couple of things. When I (we) get into trouble our emotions, pride, and ever-crouching sin can get our minds pretty tangled. I want to behave justly and kindly but find it difficult to even know what just behavior is in some cases.

Life can be confounding sometimes. Sound theology helps iron out a lot of situations. But, we are confronted with a world where we are all liars, all proud, all make unknown and known errors, and sometimes we are falsely accused. I want business to be simple but it is not.

A Good Job Gone Bad

I had an 8’ long cabinet I picked up for repairs from a restoration company. They had me pick it up at their customer’s house. So, that made me a sub-contractor for this particular work. That was OK. I do a fair amount of work for this company. It has been a great relationship. Their customers gave great reports about me. The company always paid me promptly. No real problems; but then—the cabinet fiasco. The whole thing (I am not recording all the sordid details) turned into she said, he said, he didn’t do (but we know he did do), money issues and… well, if you have ever been in business you know the scenario. I know I am a sinner and far from perfect.

In fact, I have taught my apprentice not to ever use the word perfect to describe anything we do. We are not perfect. We strive to be perfect but do not claim to have achieved that status. This is not an excuse to deliver bad work. It does recognize the reality that, simply put, we are not perfect. For the cabinet in question, I thought I had done great work. We have multiple five-star reviews on the internet. I really work to produce superior work. In the shop my eyes and my apprentice’s eyes saw a well performed repair/refinish job. The customer’s eyes saw a project that was so bad that the cabinet had to be redone by someone else. I cannot explain this. It just is.

Acting Honorably in Imperfect Situations

So, how does all this relate to the work of producing a well trained apprentice? I am convinced that apprenticeship training must include discussions about the bad experiences, the errors, the false accusations, lies and (hopefully not) counter lies, excuses, rotten circumstances, bad advice from suppliers, our own bad work, poor communication, laziness, and dishonesty. Somehow there needs to be discussions about how Christians may justly and wisely act within an imperfect world. How do we apply our belief in the sovereignty of God in all circumstances?

We ought to discuss our own possibilities for errors and our propensity to deny them. We should teach our apprentices how to behave wisely within difficult circumstances. We should discuss how to christianly handle situations where the customer is clearly wrong. We might talk about the covenantal nature of responsibility and what that means for a business owner. A discussion about money and how its role in disputes ought to be rightly handled would be useful. Anyway, I am convinced we ought not hide these events and conversations from our apprentices. Maybe by God’s grace, our embarrassments can help them become better than we are.

Apprentice Has a WIN & the Master Learns Something

A Refinishing Job Well Done

This week Tim completed his first solo contract project. It turned out great. His customer was pleased as punch (however pleased a punch may be) and handed him a handful of cash. It was a win for everybody. I consulted with my aspiring apprentice near the end about final details—how to perfect the work for presentation to the customer. Tim was pretty proud of his work on this. He fixed any minor imperfections to the best of his ability and turned out a great job.

Old Dogs CAN Learn New Tricks

It was a good moment as he asked for final advice. We like and respect each other. I believe he has the gift to become really good at this type of work. It was my privilege to be a part of his learning. I took a few pictures, before and after. The color I worried was too dark turned out perfect. Sometimes it is best to simply let the apprentice learn on his own, but this time I was the one who learned something i.e. clear coats brighten dark-stained wood grain. And, sometimes if you remain silent you can avoid having said something stupid.

Young Dogs Learn New Tricks Even Faster

Tim has started to move on to a new type of skill now. He is building his first drawer. The more I can teach him the better for both of us. He learns new skills and I have more time to do other work, like seeking new customers or playing on Facebook. I pray daily for God’s blessing on both of us and for success for us as we build this business.

Tim’s finished cabinet refinishing project

Customer Care: The Color of Success

I failed in some of my duties as Master Craftsman this week. I should have been helping my apprentice understand how to communicate with the customer on important details and decisions. In this case the now fully sanded cabinet needed to be re-stained—but in what color? My apprentice simply chose a color he thought would be close to the original cabinet color and went with it. Me, I think the antique piece is considerably too dark. And it is too late to change the color since the stain is all soaked into the wood.

Color Me Diligent

There is some kind of principle muttering and puttering around the edges of my mind concerning this event. There likely are lessons here that are transferable to any trade.

I believe we tend to be lazy sometimes or at least lack diligence in our work. I should have advised Tim to get approval from the customer for the color used prior to applying it. After all, we have a stain sample board in the shop that could easily have been used to confirm a correct color.

Everyday Choices & Taking Care of Your Customer

There have to be a million choices made every day by small business managers that are similar to this. Color, fabric type, quality of a part, decisions that a customer ought to have a say in should not be guessed at and supplied by the worker and then fobbed off on the customer as ‘well, its done now—sorry.’

Once again there is a moral question about doing what is right for the customer. As the master craftsman I believe it is my duty to teach that right morality and wisdom to my apprentice. He is under my care, and needs to hear Godly wisdom on how to handle normal issues of the day.