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.