How to Restore an Antique Furniture

Intro: How to Restore an Antique Furniture

I wanted to share about my passion. Restoring old and antique furniture. Lately i restored an old cabinet and here are the various steps i followed to give this old fellow a facelift !

STEP 1: First Step - Quick Analyse of the Piece of Furniture

At the first glance we can see that the piece of furniture is very dirty, on the inside and on the outside. The bottom of the cabinet has to be replaced. Metal pannels are rusty and will need to be worked on. Also the ledge has disapeared.

STEP 2: Disassembly

We are going to disassemble the piece of furniture to work on all the defectuous parts. To do that we will carefully remove the dowels. We already see that the bottom has to be redone and not only because of the rat poops ! We will have to recreate the missing baseboards. We also will have to create a leg on the mortice.

STEP 3: The Pannels

The various pannels have also been disassembled et some of the shards will be glued back. The ancient wood has a tendancy to rectract. To give its original dimensions back we will use really thin rods of the same color to complete the pannels. This has to be done on each pannel.

STEP 4: Pegs and Mortises

Removing the frame is easy thanks to the pegs that are easy to remove. On the side we will need to pierce in order to extract the pegs. The leg being in such a bad shape, we will crate new ones in the same wood.

STEP 5: The Drawers

Drawers are in a bad shape. Slides have to be changed. We make the lath using balls of chestnut.

STEP 6: Rebuilding the Cabinet

The side pannels have been rebuilt with new pegs.To keep authenticity we decided to use parts of an old cabinet but the side pannels are brand new. For the bottom part we used the same technique meaning we used woods of an old cabinet. The wood buttons have been replace by an old lock using the same material as the bottom of the cabinet.

STEP 7: Completion

The cabinet is finaly cleaned and brightened. The sawing at the back is kept to keep authenticity. On the side we removed oxydation from the metalic pannels. So here we are, you just witnessed the various step i follow to restore an antique cabinet !

Find more on my old website here: http://lartisandumeuble.free.fr

And if you liked it support my new professionnal website : http://lebonpeintre.pro

Comments

[BebeP1]

Glue?? What kind of glue do you use to glue pieces back with?

[4WantofaNail]

this is quite honestly an amazing restoration! A little confusing around step 3. What did you add to bring the wood back into it's original form? I'd also be curious as to you you finished the piece. all in all not a bad effort by any means much better than i could do. i hope to see more of your work.

[KiloVision]

Absolutely beautiful.

I have an antique wood tool chest. One of the sides has begun to split at the edge with the grain. Any recommendation on how to fix?

[seamster]

Wow, that was quite a transformation, from such a rough condition to the a thing of beauty. Very nicely done!:)

[wold630]

Nice job! It looks great!