All in , all done .... miracle recovery .... descriptive post below
We finished a couple of interesting repairs last week and I was sending photos to clients so I thought I would post them here too ... The bureau above is one of the last pieces of furniture we have to restore that was damaged in the fire I have occasionally written about. I thought it was a goner as it took several days in the sun to even get it open, and when we finally did, it really didnt look too promising ... Looks can be deceiving though and by the time Jim stripped the smoked shellac and sanded the interior and resealed it, I was starting to be just a little more optimistic. Click the photos to enlarge them ...
Here, Jim has stripped off the toasted shellac and sanded the interior, which he is now coating with a seal coat of shellac and wax to get rid of the smoke odor.
There were then some repair necessary to the face that that you can see in the first photo above ...
I chipped off what was left of the round corners and replaced them with new veneers. The masking tape was a good trick. It allowed me to bend the veneers cold without the pieces breaking or separating, kind of like a paper backed veneer would be, only thicker...
I taped them in place with the repair mans friend, 3M 2040 masking tape, a stretchy but strong and sticky clamp..
The stripped and sanded drawers ... Whats up with that top one? ..
We applied a thin coat of aniline dye, recoating some elements a couple of times to balance the color, and then shellaced with a wash coat of diluted fresh amber shellac. Well build slowly in thin coats from here until we reach the desired shine, which will not be too terribly shiny ... The hardware has been cleaned and reantiqued and is ready to go back on when the finish is complete ... I think it will look like a million bucks when its done ...
Another fire victim in the before stage ....
In the almost finished stage. The brass was polished and then reantiqued and the shellac was built slowly as mentioned above ... We finished the top with a coat of black patinating wax which was perfect for the job .... The Revere bowl was totally black and looked almost hopeless before Jim got to work on it ...
This is another repair that came through recently from Hildene, Robert Todd Lincolns home, in Manchester, Vermont. We had a huge windstorm a couple of weeks ago, which blew open the French doors at the house and knocked the table across the room
Before ...
After
Sometimes you have stuff around that you knew was extraordinary when you first discovered it, and then, somehow, it becomes part of the scenery and well, its just there. Like these two pieces of redwood burl hanging on the wall of the shop. They caught my eye at Berkshire Products in Massachusetts, maybe 5 years ago and I had them on a shelf for a year or two, waiting for a worthy project ... One day, we sanded them up and oiled them thinking someone would come along and be inspired and they looked so great,
A couple of black mahogany bedside tables we delivered to Boston last week on Wills bench
Another close up
Right side
Left side .... Kind of humbling actually .... Cant paint like that ...
