It's Twisted!

Here's a gem from top to bottom and from beginning to end.
Our customers recently experienced some disappointing and painful surprises. Aargh! (Life bites! sometimes, huh.) So the family decided to have this fine custom-built maple table redone to serve some critical upcoming family gathering plans---and hopefully before the up and coming Christmas holidays!  

The top of this beauty is just shy of 72 inches in diameter, so it's both big AND beautiful. Just take a long look at that pedestal base (below)! It's "twisted" 90 degrees from bottom to top.  Is that cool or what?!

The base's four-inch circular twists (below), a total of eight, really help distinguish this piece. The size of the top on that stunning  base and the visual depth we anticipate in the top's maple grain will really make it visually exquisite when all the work is done. 

I'm showing it to you in pieces here simply because we couldn't put the top on it's base in the shop. It occupied a third of the shop for almost two weeks, so we had to schedule it into our work accordingly.


In keeping with the home's decor we were asked to try matching the table to the color of their home's floors (above left). That process took some trial and error (and some back-and-forth), but I think you'll agree the effort was successful.  You can see a piece of the hickory floor we "borrowed" to help us approach a color match on the table's top and base.

 

Here are a couple pictures of the base and the top respectively. I'll acquire and publish a picture of the table in the family home and all together in a future blog. God willing our customer will move back into their newly refurbished home before Christmas. In the meantime these two pics will have to do.

That's Wood Talkin for today, but keep listening...because wood has a voice of its own.

Dick

Just Hangin Around Again

I'm baaaaaack! Of course that's the line every anxious movie goer anticipated in response to Arnold Schwartzenneger' famous line, "I'll be back."

Well, this beautiful door is hanging around the neighborhood again; it's back. It's in a difficult spot in a difficult climate under a comparatively small stoop...little protection from the elements. So our customer wanted to have it refinished in a quality oil, a product they could easily and routinely maintain and one that could handle the temperature extremes and the ultraviolet at 5600 feet elevation.

So there it is all handsome and bursting with character....and that's Wood Talkin for today.

KEEP LISTENING...because wood talks.

Dick

A Front Door

Everybody coming to the house sees it up close and personal. So we all tend to take them for granted. This one is no exception. It's on a home built in the 1980s and as design would dictate, it's on the home's southern face under a small covered stoop. So it's taken an environmental beating. Hot sun, dry and ultraviolet extremes with little reprieve day after day....taken for granted.

So......what's a faithful and dependable door to do? Well this handsome maple sentry is getting a long deserved face lift. Boy is it happy, and he's telling us as much and enjoying every minute of this pampering.

This handsome guy, with leaded-in glass lights, trimmed panels and moulding surrounds has every reason to be confident. He's had his down season, but it will soon be history. He'll be able to strut his stuff across the neighborhood! We'll offer an update in a forthcoming blog.

So, here is to listening, because of course Wood is Talkin.

DICK

A Perennial Charmer

Here's a handsome piece we see often. These aromatic cedar chests are so readily displayable and they are so practical as well. This one, manufactured in the early 1940s, is really in excellent condition. Yes, it needs some attention to it's mahogany finish and had lost some tiny pieces of veneer, but the chest's air seal is intact, it's under the case drawer is in great shape and slides smoothly, and it's internal shelf and linkage are in great working condition. That's a lot more than we can say for many of us after 70 years of hanging around. Ha.

Our customer asked us to put some legs on this little charmer. So what you see in the picture is what we did. It gave her a nice three inch lift...some fun high heels!

We gently stripped and cleaned this little beauty. It's got a lacquer seal coat and two coats of gloss finish lacquer...gently nibbed and then buffed. She wants to go home; a real serious case of home sickness!

That's Wood Talkin for today. Listen, listen, listen!

Dick

An Institutional Rocker?

Here's maybe a curious story....and maybe you can clarify a detail our two?

A special customer belongs to this fascinating solid mapel rocker. It has a fold-down portion that lifts to make a half-table on one side. I suspect this hand-made beauty may have been built in an institutional shop, like a hospital or turn-of-the-century Sanitorium. As you can see, both the back and it's seat are canned in a Herringbone pattern.

Our customer called us to repair a broken dowel in the frame of the caned seat. But what appeared to be a reasonably doable repair....replacing the dowel...was quickly complicated by the tightness of the cane woven seat. It means that the seat must be cut away to accommodate the new dowel, then the cane can be replaced. So, that's where we're at right now,  we're caning the seat having replaced the dowel and resetting and gluing the joints. It'll soon be good as new.

That's Wood Talkin for today....do you listen to your furniture? 

Torn from the house wall!

 Here's a fun story. This little cabinet was pulled from the wall of his grandparents' 1880's home in Princeton, N.J....before it was demolished to make room for a parking lot. Our customer has several of these. This one is the smallest. Leaded glass lights and solid oak frame distinguish this little gem. You're seeing our nearly finished effort here (left, ...still oiling its top).


But it didn't look exactly like this when he brought it to the shop. It needed some work. A wall cabinet--one crafted to be built-in--is not completed as a stand alone cabinet. So there were some important parts that were missing when it was pulled away from the wall and carted off. 

Our job was to clean it up and make it "stand alone." So we needed to add some pieces to the top, re-align and glue the sides of the cabinet, re-configure the trim, and create internal structures in the base to accommodate a new drawer. Then, our goal was to try to  color-match the new pieces--as best we could given the cabinet is 134 years old! We want to "match" the seasoned pieces and genarally touch-up the entire case. That effort was completed with some stain and multiple coats of hard oil.The goal was about practicality and historical integrity, not necessarily contemporary perfection.

Well, it's quite handsome don't you think. It has turned out really good. A very attractive stand-alone oak cabinet from the 1800's. Listen to it quietly mumbling to itself; busting with pride at it's new lease on an old life promise.

OK, then. That's Wood Talkin for today. Keep listening.

An 1880s Hall Tree

Ok....Here is the finished product. It was a lot of fun. As you can see, this tall gentleman has significant integrity. (We decided to reconsider its gender after a tense discussion with the piece late one evening...please pardon our initial ignorance in this matter. ) The hat racks that are above and mid-section of this hall tree, two were intact and two, the lower ones as you see them here, were broken.

The four racks are made of cast iron. The iron has a finish of brass. We put these in the holes where they belonged after we had removed the tarnish and the old varnish finish. Then we coated each with a clear lacquer seal coat to prevent future tarnish. Their placement, despite their not having all of their parts and pieces intact, provided cover to the old holes and balanced the tree. At their discretion our customer can make the decision to replace them with new reproduction racks or leave them just as you see them.

The beveled mirror hiding behind those newspapers waits to be unveiled. The mirror is original and really compliments the tree. It's in great shape 120 years after its original placement. Most off us can't say that for our faculties after just fourty years of wear-n-tear. Hmmm

This stately old gentleman was happily carried out of the shop....the first leg of his trip home this week.  He's almost made it back to where he belongs...after nearly fifty years as a basement dweller. A near resurrection for sure!

Emerging Beauty

This beautiful old hall tree was literally dragged intro the shop by our neighbor. My best guess is that she is of1880's vintage, a well used and worn red oak hall tree.

For her130 years she has her battle scars. (Yes,  that's a beveled antique mirror behind that newspaper mask.) As you see her here she's well into our stripping process (shhh!) and on her way to a beautiful revitalized look. It will be a look of confidence she has not had for probably eighty--maybe ninty years! Is she gonna be excited or what!!!

She has been a basement dweller for the past 40 years,  and before that.... guesses,  only guesses. We do know she has been in our neighbors' family since the late 1800's. She belonged to their great grandparents. Soon she will belong to a great,  great grandson--still in the family...and again loved and prized.

She stands in this last pic curing. Stain has been applied,  two tones,  waiting for sealing and finishing in a couple days.  It'll be a coming out celebration. ... soon,  FUN. 

That's Wood Talkin for now. ... keep listening.

Glass n Bumpers

From the library to the game room. These two items fit that description exactly. These recent repairs were in and out in about a week, but each left a lasting impression. 


Billiards Table

two of the tables beautiful mahogany legs

Our customer called us to his home to pick-up and touch-up his billiards table before he put it back together following a move. As you can imagine, it occupied a good portion of one of our shop's rooms while we groomed it piece-by-piece. Of course the biggest piece was the frame. But it wasn't long before it was happily going home cleaned, shined and polished with a new lease on the gaming life.

 Glassed Library Bookshelves
 These stacked, glassed book cases sure didn't look at all like this initially. They were literally pea green. Five separate coats of finish, the earliest was a clear varnish and subsequent coats included pink, white, a banana yellow, and the pea green. We did some fabrication replicating side trim on one of the cases sections.

All the hardware was original, brass throughout including the decorative button pulls on each framed glass section. It was a delight to compare the roll-up mechanisms at each with some that are available in the contemporary furniture market. This mechanism was sophisticated, compared to the dime-store type alternatives I've often seen (and I have one on an expensive oak case of my own). Each mechanism worked smoothly and perfectly on each level. This red (pictured) oak frame and case is stained with Minwax's English Chestnut and two buffed satin lacquer top coats.

That's Wood Talkin for today. Keep listening!

Bar Stool Beauties

Now, here's a really beautiful pair of bar chairs. I consider these two young ladies to be of a category I call "art" fabrications. Antiqued wrought iron bases, swivel frames, high-glossed contour seats and backs all hand painted. These identical twins are the same, but at the same time different, albeit they probably were products of a larger fabrication effort.

 
 They came to the shop because the high-gloss finished decor was separating from a laminated wood foundation. Their surface was coming loose, flaking and then coming apart in places--a huge disappointment to our customer! The kind of crazing in the surface, something my customer and I discussed in the initial evaluation process, probably does suggest it's likely there will be more deterioration in their future. But hey, that happens to all of us with time....right!  So, despite that possibility (or likelihood), our customer wanted to have us do the repair where the flaking and loss has obviously developed to spoil and threaten the surfaces. 

Long story short: these two beauties are effectively without any obvious blemishes again.  The repair effort was not an easy one. Quickly into the process it became very obvious why the separation had taken place, and a repair in one spot often meant a need for the same repair in the immediately adjacent area too. Whew...a lot of careful, nervous work! I think we came close to mastering the process and the technique of the original artisan for color and patina...with some modest exceptions. So now they are the unchallenged beauties in our modest shop, strutting their stuff while they patiently anticipate re-occupying their esteemed places back home.

That's Wood Talkin....have you learned how to listen?

Dick

Art Deco Medly

Here are some pictures of the Art Deco bedroom suite I promised to show you. Check it out.

That's Wood Talkin....keep listening. 
Thanks

She is Going Home

Compare this picture, taken in our customer's home, to the one we posted last week. Wow! We re-glued several internal structural members and also some drawer joints. We repaired the mirror's crown (it was broken into five pieces) and we gently cleaned and re-oiled the dresser's finish surfaces. She gleams again, but all the "refinements" of her 175 plus years are still there.

What you see taped to the mirror, for our customer's review and discovery: a small hand-forged (square) mirror nail and a small antique cloth pin we found suspended inside the dresser's frame. We left several very old buttons in the dresser's glove drawers--also for our customer to find and relish.

Beautiful...as any refined lady should be

That's Wood Talkin for today...keep listening.

175 Years of Sophistication and Beauty

This beauty came into the Wood Talkin shop last week. Our customer's goal is to enhance her finish, so we engaged some careful discussion around what that meant to her, the impact of any effort on the value of this fine piece of art, and our customer's long-term plans for this piece.

Everything about this old beauty says "art." From her drawers' hand-scribed dovetail joints, autographed frame, deeply worn drawer slides, square hand-forged nails, cast iron and porcelain castors, rough sawn internal and back-closure pieces...we conclude that she is pre-1840, and probably 1820-1830.

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This was a square weight bearing side of the drawer slide worn convex through 175 years!

Four (count them!) hand scribed and then cut dovetail joints on each drawer. Can you see the scribe marks?

Art Deco

This pretty little Art Deco vanity came to us with a matching vanity chair, bed headboard and footboard and a five drawer dresser. It's a really fun set. Our customer acquired these to offer her friends a guest room adventure when they come to her home for an overnight stay.

The set turned out really well. Among some other things it was "heard" to say, "It's so wonderful to look young again." Yes, they are so impressive when one enters that room for the very first time. I'll offer a picture of the entire set in a upcoming post.
That's Wood Talkin for tonight.

Where are the handles? I apologize that we did not get them into this picture. They were later cleaned and re-secured onto the drawer fronts. Manufactured in the 1930-40's, they were thin brass and plastic. Yes, plastic! At that time plastics were relatively fresh on the manufacturing scene; the latest thing. These were a streaming purple-ish color framed in yellow brass frames on each drawer. They really accented this little vanity---they made it POP!

Check out that wonderful, original, decorative tape. It's thematic throughout the set...on each piece!