1940s bar cabinet post prohibition restoration remake

Welcome back to Montford Boulevard. Today we're restoring and remaking an Art Deco liquor cabinet. This handsome vintage server had some unique challenges and plenty of personality. It's also a portrait of a unique time in history following both the Prohibition and the Great Depression. Follow along for another fascinating journey back to the era of Art Deco furniture. It's actually only been a few months since we started this YouTube channel. So this was a project that we had started and then it got tucked aside. But now we decided it's time to finish it. You can see that we have a good amount of work done already in sanding and adding some stain. You can see some quarter sawn oak in the trim and these hand-carved appliques. They had some cracks in them because they were kind of thin. Started to repair them but that's going to need some more work. The top is looking really good. That's already been sanded and stained. This side compartment is for wine bottles and this is original to the piece. It came with these pieces of metal trim. This one actually goes to the bottom like that and they're in good enough shape that we are going to clean them up and leave them. Still looking good. We did remove the hinges and we're going to clean those up and polish them. Now you see the inside of this door. There was actually a rectangular cover over that and we decided to cut one that was curved to go with the natural form you can see on the front door there. These handles are quite attractive. Oftentimes we'll use different handles but we are going to go with the original ones on this piece. The drawers were fitting a little tight so we're going to have to address that later but they are still solid. Definitely savable and with these interesting compartments. This one drawer has compartments. This is a backer plate for the handles and look at how art deco that is. It's a little bent up a little dinged up but we're going to save that. Even the handle very much art deco. Yeah we like those but this really is a fascinating time in history. This was made in the 1940s following the prohibition and the great depression. So both the United States and the world were working their way out of some difficult times and art deco was a real expression of the optimism. Looking at the fronts of the drawers now with that nice original circular aesthetic that they were going for. On the insides this is where there were rectangular shaped panels originally and we decided to cut fresh circular ones to emphasize the original aesthetic. Here's the inside of the piece looking quite clean. We've gotten a good start on the sanding. There's a little bit more to be done. Attractive grain. The shoes are in good shape. No water damage. That's fortunate. Looking at the applique where that crack was we noticed that a nail was missing from the bottom. The original hole is still there. So just adding a nail was what this needed to be secure again. We'll have to clean out that bondo of course and redo it. This will only take about 10 minutes to dry. It'll be hard as rock. Now we're going to clean up the drawers. They were still in very solid condition. Looking at the handle backer. They're a little bit beat up. A little bit bent but very attractive. Very art deco. So these are worth saving. On the wire wheel here and these cleaned up really nicely. These are the main handles for those two drawers in the front. A little bit of an art nouveau aesthetic to them. Flowing floral and these are backers that go behind those main handles which were dented a little bit. They were dented in. They weren't supposed to be like that. Probably the hardware was too tight and it pulled it in. And funny one of them was not matching the brass color after we polished it but that's okay. We're going to make these all the same color anyway. Pounding this flat again and it is going to need some reinforcement. You can see how the back of the handle sits flush on there. So what we're actually going to do is use a washer, use two-part epoxy, adhere that on there and then we are going to coat it with gold lacquer just to make sure that those stay intact even if the hardware is tight. This is a high quality lacquer Mohawk brand bright gold. Look at that. Looking somehow even more art deco in gold now. Now we're going to start from the top. We're looking at this trim. First we are going to polish it with some Lac French. French lacquer. This is an excellent medium. It dries quickly. It'll make a very good base coat. Now we're coming back in with black lacquer over top of it. We coated it with satin and here you can see just a little bit more personality to this piece. Now we're going to address the applique. You've probably seen us do this before on this channel. This again is gold Mohawk lacquer. After the gold we come back in with some gloss making sure each coat is dry fully. We'll do several coats of gloss as a barrier then black lacquer over top of the gloss. Not too heavy on the black though. We just want to pull out the accents in this carved applique so now we're using Lac French to remove the black. Give it an aged look and also leave some of that black down in the grooves. We dust gloss over top of that and here's the effect and you can see it just has a bit more character. Now we're going to add a little bit of black to the shoes at the bottom to match the aesthetic at the top. Sort of a frame for the main center section. Here's the drawer I was talking about earlier. Fits kind of tight. We wanted to make sure it wasn't just in the wrong slot so we tried the other one. That's also a bit tight. You sometimes have issues with swelling if it was kept in a humid environment so that's likely what happened. I'm going to use the belt sander just to shave down a little bit on the side of this drawer and that's what it needed. Nice smooth fit now. Working on the inside of the side compartment we're going to clean that up. It did not need much. Now we are masking just enough to get a can in there. We're going to hit the edges with black because later we have a felt velvet fabric that we are going to put in the bottom just for a little bit of added class in this wine bottle compartment. Adding some clear shellac to the drawers. Look at that beautiful oak. As time went on less and less would furniture factories use wood of this quality for the interiors of pieces but you can see this is very high quality for the drawer frames. Here's that felt velvet fabric. Comes with adhesive. Very handy product. It's got a nice soft feel to it. Fits right in there and again just adding a few subtle black accents here and there. This is a top shelf for accessories or tools. Maybe a wine bottle opener and we're adding this metal trim back on. Again it's in good enough shape. This is original to the piece. So the side compartment was missing a handle and here's the one that we chose. We did order this off of Etsy I believe. We're testing the fit of the original drawer bottom and fortunately that still is working well. We're going to add felt to the bottom of that still but just wanted to test it out first. Putting our handles back on. Look at how clean and fresh that looks. And here is that felt fabric. Putting it on the original drawer bottom here. You can see how clean that looks before we add the dividers back in. Put the bottom in first. Now I have more of that clear shellac and this is the inside of the front door. A lot of color in that wood on its own does not need much. And here is the outside of the front doors. That is the original veneer. It's going to need just a little bit of touch up. Pretty simple though. That was a very thin veneer on the inside of the door so that was a sand through there that we're going to touch up. We added some ebony oil-based stain to those circular panels that we made for the insides of the doors. Tacking them on with the nailer now. Just wanted a little bit of separation in the color and to highlight the grain just a bit. And we are going to add just a little bit more of artistic flair. This is again to the inside of the door and we have a black vinyl. It has a wood grain pattern in it but it looks pretty natural actually the wood grain. Carefully cutting it out here with upholstery shears. See that? We've got the wood grain going in the same direction. Just a little added bonus there. Kind of fun on the inside of the door. Looking at the main body now and you can kind of see the character coming around. The aesthetic that we're going for. Time to address the inside now. I'm going to really clean that up with sanding and we're going to use more of the oil-based ebony stain that we were using on those panels on the insides of the doors. Just for these shelves though. Now this did go on a little bit darker than we were expecting but that's not a problem. If you come in early enough you can kind of buff it out, rub it in. We always use 100% cotton rags for that and that's what we were going for. After it dried you can see the natural wood grain is coming through and it has a bit more of modern touch to it now. Looking very attractive. Now some colonial maple gel stain on the exterior just again to add some separation. Just accentuating the original shape and design of this piece. Back to the inside now and we're going to add some black lacquer to the frame, just to the trim here. Trying to make all of these touches subtle just to sort of accentuate what we have and there you go. Looking a little bit cleaner, a little bit more modern. Now this is water-based triple thick polyurethane. You only need one coat in a lot of cases. We did the entire interior here including the sides and it really has a nice effect once that dries. These are the fronts of the doors and we decided to add just a slight accent. We want to do black along this edge and we're looking for ways to accentuate these shapes as well just a little bit. First we'll start with that edge. Now again this is more of that ebony oil-based stain. Same thing, it went on a little bit dark. And then we just rub it in and that's more what we're going for. Moving on, so this was a leftover frame. We had a broken mirror that we came across and we saved the frame because oftentimes we will use some of these pieces on future projects. Came in very handy here. What we're going to do is make a backsplash for our cabinet. So these are the sides of the mirror frame pieced together. It gets a little elaborate in the center there. We're going to cut those portions off. But look at this, these nasty staples. They're kind of zigzagged. Very, very much do their job. They are so hard to deal with. Look at how well that holds on. Took a lot of effort to bang that off of there. But now we're going to trim down those pieces to the desired height for our backsplash. I'm going to set them up just to get a feel. Again referencing that circular aesthetic that was on the drawer fronts, we want to continue that onto the backsplash. So we're going to have to chop off a little bit more here but this is the general idea. There you go, we've cut off the center portions. It will take a little bit of sanding and shaping but this is going to work. So this is for the back support. I've got another, it's a vintage piece of 1930s wood that we're going to use, real sturdy. Chopping it off just to kind of mimic the shape. We do leave the backs of our pieces rustic just to preserve the history but we do want to go with the aesthetic. I'm rounding the edges here. This is going to both keep the backsplash more sturdy and help it to affix to the piece and make sure it doesn't come off. Looking at the face of it now, the visible side, going to add some bondo to the crease in the middle and to some of these screw holes. They were for the bakelite clips on the original mirror. Now we're going to wipe this down with naphtha, both to prep it for stain and also just to get a look at the grain. You can see plenty of personality here. We are again using colonial maple gel stain. It's a little bit more toward the brown spectrum and just a little bit less of the orange. We wanted a bit more brown here. We have continued added just a little bit more black at the bottom here but just to look at the inside we popped one of the drawers in, getting a feel for it. Back to the backsplash. I'm going to add some of that black lacquer just to the top edge. These are panels we made for the outside sides of this piece, again to kind of mirror what's going on originally on the front. You can see it's just making the sides a little bit more interesting without going overboard. We're going to use black wax to fill those nailer holes, then polish that in. Looking in the side compartment here, we're getting ready to add the handle. Door in place. You're starting to get a feel for it. Back to the backsplash and you can see we have traced out what's going to be a thin piece of black trim, going with that same aesthetic that we're trying to make consistent all throughout this piece. This is some leftover oak that we had, kind of matches the insides of those drawers. Very attractive piece of wood. I've used temporary adhesive spray to put my template down and now I'm spraying black just to make a line so that I can cut. It comes off real easily. Now on to the bandsaw. Just take my time with the cut. It will need a little bit of sanding and shaping and I'll sand the face off of that too, the leftover adhesive. After that, we added some black gel stain actually and then some satin lacquer once that dried and it's looking pretty sharp. Love that oak grain. The main face plate of the backsplash needs a little bit of touch up before we adhere that trim that we just cut. Here we go, trying it out and now we're going to use that support that we made to attach the back. Again, we always like to use vintage wood for projects like this, just to leave a little bit of the history visible on the back. Adding some Titebond II wood glue to that trim and we've sanded to make sure that it sticks and holds on. Nailer, same as before. We have just a couple of little additions to make this thing pop. This is, on the center of the backsplash, a gold circle and here we are on the inside of the piece. This is a wine glass rack. I believe it holds up to nine wine glasses. They hang upside down. Plenty of space for that on the inside of this piece. And now on the face, we're going to do just a couple more of those half circles, just giving this a bit of a ritzy sort of a polish. This is just some final details we're adding to make this pop a little bit more. Let them sit and dry for a bit. And with that, here is the final piece coming together. Wine glass rack and a wine bottle holder on the inside that is movable. The wine bottle holder and compartments for tools or silverware even. Taking a look at the side compartment for wine bottles and here's how it all came together. Just one more look at the before. It was looking pretty dull and hopefully this will be ready for another hundred years of service. If you'd like to purchase this drinks cabinet, you can find the link below in the description. Both of the nightstands from our previous video have sold already, so be sure to check that out if it's of interest. As always, thank you so much for watching, for interacting, for your comments. All of it really does help our channel. You're welcome back here at Montford Boulevard anytime.