Jacobean Dresser Restoration | Antique Furniture Flip

Today's project is this dresser. It has me a bit stumped as far as what to do. I did some research on Google Lens and it brought up two different styles of possibility either Art Nouveau or Jacobian. I'm pretty sure it's Jacobian style. So there was more damage on it than I anticipated when I picked it up. So then top separates from the base and when I took the top off, there was a huge chunk of veneer missing, which is disappointing because I really feel a wood top is better especially when you're trying to put something on top of it. You know paint just gonna it's just gonna mar if you try to move this at all. So I think a wood top would be the best. Obviously you can't see it but if you ever want to have it separated for refinishing purposes it needs to be right. So I think I'm gonna have to re-veneer the top which you know my last re-veneering according to that video was not the most successful endeavor. So I am going to attempt it again and see if I can get the top re-veneered on the base. Now this top looks pretty good. Obviously there's an alligator finish on on the top so that'll have to be stripped and I've got some pretty good chunks of veneer out of the base and on the side. So like I said this one has me a bit stumped. I'm not exactly sure what to do. Do I paint out part of it? Do I refinish part of it? Do I try to refinish the whole thing? I'm not sure. So I'm just going to get it cleaned up start stripping the tops and we'll see. Here we go. So this is the first time that I've actually done this particular style, the Jacobean style. So I can see I have some damage on the top, some failing finish. I have some areas along the drawers there. You can see I have a chunk of veneer missing out of it as well. If we go around to the side at the base you can see I'm missing some veneer. There's some chunks there missing as well which is pretty typical of this age of a dresser. But I love all those little details along the side. I have some veneer damage on this side as well but I'm just going to strip it and try to see which direction I want to go. The top of the base really has me stumped because you can see not much of it is seen but obviously I do have to address that. So the first thing I'm just going to do is I'm going to go ahead and I'm going to strip it. I use a variety of strippers. This particular one is one that I found at Sherwin-Williams. It is Smart Strip. It's their citrus gel stripper. I'll have it linked down in the descriptions. But I use a variety ones. Later on I use clean strips. So I'm always on a quest for the perfect paint finish stripper. But after I apply this, it's a gel substance you can see. I'm going to go ahead and wrap it with some plastic wrap just to make sure it doesn't dry out. Kind of let it do its thing and I'll come back and scrape it. I have some veneer along the base and I'm just going to go ahead and secure. You can see it's loose there. So I'm just going to use some wood glue, get it clamped up and re-secured. So once I've let it kind of do its thing, I'm going to go ahead and take the plastic wrap off. I'm using a carbide scraper very gently and I'm just pulling off as much finish as I can. So the more finish, the closer I can get to raw, the less sanding I have to do later on. So I'm just very gently going over it with my carbide scraper. The key to the carbide scraper is if you're using them when you're in the stripping process is make sure it's really sharp. I have a sharpener. I resharpen it every time I, after every time I use it. So you're just basically using it like you would a putty knife, but it's just a little bit sharper. So it gets a little bit more of that finish off. Then I'll come back with either a lacquer thinner or an acetone, get more of the residue off. Then I'll come in with a light abrasive like this blue scrubber or a very fine steel wool and try to get even more of that finish off. Again, the farther I can get down to raw and the more finish I can get off, it just helps me in the sanding process later on. I like to use wire brushes. You can use a nylon one or I like to use like a soft brass one. You don't want to use something that's going to really scratch up the wood or damage it. So just, I'm just trying to get into those little nooks and crannies and get as much finish out as I can. You can see I put a little bit of my solvent in a jelly jar and I'm just going in with my wire brushes to get any more of that additional finish off. Once that's dry, I'm ready to move on to the sanding process. Depending on where I have finish, I may have to start at 80. But the areas that don't have the finish, I can start at 120. I'll start with my orbital sander and then I'll have to come in with a detail sander and start. You can see there where the shine is, that's still finish left. And so I have to get all of that finish off and that's usually where I start with 80 grit sandpaper and then I can go up to 120. I'll finish at 180 and then I'll pause to decide how I want to finish the piece. You'll see throughout the sanding process I use a variety of tools. Here I'm using a pocket scraper just to get into some of the detailed areas. It has a triangle head and then I also have one that has a teardrop head that can get into curved areas. I also use sanding contours that I wrap my sandpaper around that helps me get into different profiles. So sometimes you just have to grab a variety of tools that you're using to get into detailed areas. I'm going to go ahead and fill in the top where I had the big veneer missing. I'm going to fill it in with some DAP wood filler. I really like this wood filler. It can be used as a wood fill, it can be used as a grain fill, lots of different varieties of uses. I'm going to fill it in any other spots that I see and then once it dries I'll sand it back. This is when I started to run into problems. I left it covered for not quite about 20 hours. I think you can leave it up to 24 hours. Well the problem was you'll see it started pulling up pieces of the veneer so the stripper got underneath there and a few of the pieces actually completely came off. So it wasn't too bad on these areas. You'll see I'll have some more problems later. The top drawer of the base really had most of the problems. So you'll see in a few minutes the entire piece of veneer just completely lifted up and so I ended up having to re-glue it and I continue. You'll see throughout the video I continue to have problems with it. So yesterday was rather disastrous. I'm stripping a dresser and the drawers I left the stripper on. It says you could lift it on leave it on between 1 and 24 hours. I left it on about 20 hours to really get it. I started lifting up the wrapper that I put it on and the veneer lifted up with it like literally came off and it was buckled and I was like you got to be kidding me. It reminded me of that cool your dresser I did and the similarities was it has these little ridges that must have the stripper must have gone underneath there and lifted the veneer. Why does this crap happen to me? So I'm you know compressing it back down one of the drawers looks fine the other one not so good. I'm going to try to iron it down. I've glued it ironed it. I'm going to iron it this morning. It was the Monday-est Tuesday I've had in a long time. So where are you at? Today's a new day. It's just furniture. That's what I had to remind myself. So since it's not completely flat I'm going to continue working it. So the hot iron I'm hoping that it reactivates the glue underneath there and then I can clamp it down and hopefully continue to get it to flatten out because it keeps buckling. You can see the waves in it. It still has some buckles and this is on that one drawer. You know it's funny I had a really big chunk of veneer missing out of this drawer and then when everything kind of swelled up and came off then I had too much veneer. So when I glued it back together I actually had to trim off some in the middle there. So it's kind of funny you know when it must have been really dry and then it just soaked up that stripper and it really expanded the wood. So you know wood does expand. That's a whole reason why you refinish a piece is because wood absorbs moisture. It moves and so you're putting stain and top coat or paint on it to preserve that wood. So I did have an area here that I'm missing some veneer. So I'm just going to make a little template and I'm going to take that template onto some veneer, cut it out, and just patch it in. So I'm going to try some scoring on these areas that have some rippled areas. So I'm just going to score it with my X-Acto knife, iron it, kind of swell it up, put some more glue under it, iron it down, clamp it down, and see if that will continue to make that veneer lie flat. So I put this piece in time out for a few months but I am ready to come back to it. I had some major problems with two of the drawers. Let me show you what happened. I applied the stripper. I put a plastic over it and let it set. I couldn't get to it right away so I let it set a little bit longer than normal but within the time frame. But the problem was is the stripper got into these creases and caused all of this to buckle. And so I had, you can see it's really, it's a pretty wavy. I have this whole thing just came off and so I re-adhered it, clamped it down. I've been working on it on and off. This actually looks so much better. There was all of these buckles. Like I said, this whole thing lifted off. So I still had some issues here. I just clamped that down over the weekend and it's really to the touch. It's very smooth. But you know my plan was to do this to wood and so this area I still have problems on. I don't know if you can see. You can kind of see in the light there. I still have some areas that are raised. So my other issue is the top. You know there was a huge chunk of veneer missing off the top. They helped us load it in the car and I didn't even notice it until I actually got it in the car. And so that's a huge disappointment because you know I wanted this to go to wood. So sometimes pieces just need to be put in timeout or maybe it's me. Maybe I need to put in timeout sometimes. Maybe I just need a break for pieces. But this drawer has really tested me. That and of course the top has really tested me. And so I'm still you can see throughout I'm just still really trying to get that veneer. I want it to lay down and so I'm really trying. I'm having to re-glue. I'm having to score. I'm having to clamp weight down. I'll get it eventually but I just keep trying to make it as perfect as I can. You can see it's finally starting to lay down. So that was that channel area that let all of the stripper in and it just pulled it up. If you remember what it looked like when we first started that's a whole lot better than where it was. So is it perfect? No. But considering where I started much much better. So now I'm going to go ahead and move on to the body. I'm using clean strip stripper. You definitely want to make sure you use a respirator with this stripper. I'm just going to apply it. Let it do its thing and then go ahead and scrape it off with my carbide scraper. I'll come back with the same method. I use my scraper. I come back through with a solvent with a paper towel. I wipe off as much of the stripper as I can and then I come in with a light abrasive whether it be a double zero steel wool or a light abrasive and just try to get as much of that stripper off as I can. I cleaned up the hardware but it's a kind of a pewter color and I'm not crazy about it so I'm just going to apply some gilding wax. This is really easy to apply. I'll have it linked down below. It dries really quickly and it just kind of jazzes up the hardware. Now this piece has been in time out for quite a while. It had some hidden veneer damage when I picked it up because this is the top that sits on top of it. I didn't even see it. It's on its side right now but there's two drawers that go there and it sits on top of this. I had some problems with one of the drawers veneer lifting when I was stripping it. I am so determined to let it be wood but it's just been a mess. So I follow Makers Challenge Central and they do challenges and they actually have a challenge this month, Freedom, and they're challenging people to take a project that they kind of stalled out on and finish it by July 28th and so you can I'll tag them and then the hashtag is MCC Freedom. If you have something that's been hanging around like this one for months I'm gonna try it. I really want to go dark with it and it has so many beautiful features. I'd like to do some gilding so you know I don't know if I'll finish by the end of the month but I'm gonna try and sometimes I work better under a deadline. So let's go. So five months later I'm ready to just finish this piece. I've been pushing it around the garage out of my way trying to work on other projects because I just stalled out on it. I just wasn't sure what to do with the top, the veneer, just re-veneering it just didn't make any sense. When I priced out the veneer it was a hundred dollars with by the time I had all the supplies and tacks and glue and it's just I don't know what I'm gonna sell this thing for so a hundred dollars for the veneer that you barely see just didn't seem to make good economic sense. So what I finally decided on is I'm going to gel stain it. So I wanted to go dark anyway so I'm gonna go ahead and put the gel stain on top. I'm gonna do a couple coats and I'm gonna see if that will kind of camouflage my repairs that I had on top. Once everything has been completely sanded down then I am ready to go ahead and stain. I like to put a slip coat of mineral spirits over a piece before I apply the gel stain. It just kind of helps that gel stain glide over the surface of the wood and go on very smoothly and less blotchy. With gel stain you go against the grain and then you're going to go with the grain. After it sets for a couple seconds then you're just going to come back with a separate lint-free rag and you're going to wipe off the excess. So you can see even after the first coat you can see all my repairs doesn't look great. I'm going to let that dry for 12 hours then I'm going to come back and I'm going to do a second coat. Once the gel stain is dried I'm ready to go ahead and seal it. I am using Osmo's hard wax oil. You can see I'm using like a white applicator here it puts down a good amount of product so you're just going to rub it on and then you wipe off the excess. I was trying to decide if I wanted to gild any of it. I was thinking about gilding the flourishes but because it's a different type of wood it wasn't enough contrast with the gold so I decided to just go ahead and do the gold around the perimeter of the drawers because I think it looks really good with the dark java color. Then I decided to do just a little bit on the accent pieces just to kind of jazz those up a little bit. I think it's enough though it kind of makes it special but yet it's not overpowering. Because it's a wax if you get any on anything just take some mineral spirits and it'll just wipe right off. I'm going to go ahead and line the drawers. I like to clean the interiors and then I like to refreshen the interior and the exterior with danish oil and then I'll line the interior. I felt the gold was a little bit too bold for the piece so I'm just knocking it back a little bit with some black wax just to kind of soften it and then I'm going to go ahead and protect the top by putting some felt pads on the bottom. All right after five months of working on this project let's look back at the before. This jacobin piece was very unique. I have never seen the two-piece set. Obviously I had a lot of damage still. The top that veneer damage really kind of derailed me for quite a time trying to decide what to do. I wish I could have re-veneered the top but economically it wasn't a good business decision for me. And then of course that was my during. It looked awful but here is the finished product. What do you think? I'm very pleased. This, this piece definitely tested my patience. Frustrated me. I was very upset with myself for really messing up the veneer on that one drawer but man the rest of it looks really good. I love the dark. You know so much is light right now. It's really popular. It's going really blonde and very light but the there's something about a very rich deep finish that is very classy and very classic. I think that the drawer liners are very period specific. This is a William Morris design who was very popular about the turn of the century so very period specific. I know it's not for everybody but it really fits this piece. I'm going to put a liner in. I try to find liners that really fit the era or the piece. I love the different tones of wood. You know you have I have the tones in the on the sides, the the top, the accent pieces. It has some just really beautiful details. The top turned out so good. That is original hardware. All the little accents. See how beautiful that wood is. There's the drawer that I had so many problems with. Not perfect but it's so much better than it was. I mean I'll be honest. I was really tempted just to chuck this whole thing but I'm glad I didn't because it it functions perfectly and it'll be beautiful in someone's home. So I'm really glad that I pressed through and finished it and I think it looks really good. So enjoy some of these videos and I'll come back at the end. So here's how the top turned out. You can see it's not 100 percent perfect but it turned out really good considering all the damage that I had. I ended up doing oh probably three coats I think on the top but you can see in certain lights you can't see it at all but in certain lights you can see it but the top is directly on it so you don't see any of it when it's all put together. So again is it perfect? No but it works in this particular application. So it's better than having to just chuck the whole thing. So tell me what you think. Do you like this project? Are you disappointed like I was? Thanks for hanging with me during this project. This was definitely tested my patience but thanks so much for watching.