A Trash To Cash Art Deco Furniture Story

Today is finally the day. We've been working on a pretty ambitious full bedroom set makeover for a while now, and today we are finally ready to show the end results. This is a look at the beginning. These were left over from an Art Deco vanity. You can see there are quite a few Art Nouveau elements as well. The original vanity was massive. This mirror was almost 60 inches across. We turned the base into a set of Art Nouveau nightstands. These are the original handles and the original veneer. Really a spectacular look. We also used a portion of the mirror to make a backsplash for this French tray top style dresser. You can see that gorgeous Venetian amber glass. We're always looking for that. Today we'll be focusing on the remaining elements of that mirror and the rest of the set. Welcome to Montford Boulevard and welcome to the world of Art Deco furniture. It's been raining recently here in Marietta, Georgia. Good for the plants, but it can make things a little bit challenging in the shop. We use this product by Mohawk if we have blushing to overcome. Blushing happens when there is moisture in the air that gets trapped. It really affects lacquer, which we work with a lot. Getting back to this drawer. Adding some supports. We did shrink the size of this drawer. You can see we chopped off the entire back of it. Love that key escutcheon on the front. It looks like somebody might have tried to break into this drawer. Maybe they lost the key. That's some real damage. What do you think this could be? We'll be using some Bondo wood filler to make this repair. Before that fully cures, we will shave it down with a razor. Just a bit of a shortcut for the sanding. Gotten that pretty smooth. That'll do for now. It will require some touch up later of course. You can see we've sanded the front and look at this beautiful veneer. Not sure what kind of wood grain that is. If you have any ideas, please let us know. This is the key escutcheon from the front of that drawer. We're excited to get this polished up. It does look to be solid brass. Here's a look at the before once again and look at how that glistens. It's just a trip back in time whenever you polish things like that. So here is the back for the bench. Some pretty intricate masking but we'll be adding some black along the edge. Like so. This will help to emphasize the masterful routing work done on this seat back. Really deserves some appreciation. So we've come up with a replacement applique. The original one was kind of damaged, missing some pieces. This one's a little bit more streamlined. I'm going to use some furniture wax sticks to fill the previous holes. They use these little pins to attach the applique. To put the new one back on, we're going to use solid brass escutcheon pins. Worth noting, we did clip these off and we clipped them at an angle so that they would still have a point. Just making sure they don't poke through the back of this seat back. We've decided to add handles to the front of this drawer. There were no handles as part of the original design. So we're wondering if a key was kept in the front and if you were just supposed to open the drawer that way. These are the handles we're going with. Strong Art Nouveau elements. There was a thin coating of paint on these originally. We took it all off and isn't that fun to see. I've got a little bit of an edge there we're going to have to grind off. Much better. So we've popped the buttons out of this bench. They were damaged so we have a kit with replacements. Got what we think is the proper size here. Those fit nice and snug. That's handy so we won't have to glue them. It's nice to leave them to be removable if somebody in the future wishes to get them off. Dropping the seat back in for a little preview. So we've painted the buttons black. Just adding a bit more style. Again just kind of highlighting what was already there. And we've got an idea. This piece of half round trim we've painted gold might just add a little something to the back of this bench. Why not? We like to add nylon glides to the bottoms of furniture. Protects floors and it makes these heavier pieces easy to move. Working on our top compartment. Again we've made it just a bit more streamlined. Ended up being more work than we were expecting. But we think it'll be worth it. These legs they are Eastlake. As we noted before they have such strong Art Deco like elements. And they were in such good shape. This is solid walnut. They're not going to need much. Just a little bit of touch up here and there. But we'll give them a good scrub first. We're cutting a fresh piece of veneer for the bottom of this mirror. Look at that nice waterfall bookmatched effect in the grain. This is Titebond 1 wood glue. We're going to get a generous amount and let it mostly dry. It is on both surfaces. You can see we protected the back. That is open pour veneer and we don't want anything to get into it. The iron will reactivate the glue. We're using this at a pretty hot setting and making sure it keeps moving. We'll clamp the edges just to make sure it dries and stays nice and tight. You can see we've got a mirrored effect at the top and bottom with that keystone sort of shape. So this is our tabletop. We're going to add fresh veneer to this as well. It can really help to close the pores before you add veneer. So that's what the shellac is for. We are going to bookmatch the veneer so we have this separated into right and left panels. We've got our rough pieces cut. Now we'll sharpen them. Make sure they fit nice and tight. This is peel and stick veneer from 3M. We're just going to make sure there are no bubbles in there. But this product has behaved really well for us. We do link most of the products we use below. Check out the description if you're interested. Now this is walnut on the sides. We used oak in the center. It's nice to get a combination of wood grains, different colors. Looking at the front of the drawer compartment now. We've used bondo to fill some gaps. And this is a drawer track. There is a little bit of space on the sides that we need to account for. We didn't want to make this compartment any smaller. We will be adding veneer to those sides so we've got it nice and smooth. That's that walnut veneer. It's just so convenient having the adhesive already on. The shop is getting kind of crowded today. We are shipping out a dresser. This is one we finished recently. It's a 1920s Spiegel dresser. These are hard to come by and we really love this piece. The Spiegel Furniture Company went out of business in 1930 because of the Great Depression. Pressure washers. They're spraying Frank next door's mailbox. Better be careful. But we saw these guys working down the street and asked them if they would come and do our property as well. Back on that tabletop. We're adding stain and wondering if we should make that center just a little bit darker. You can always go darker. But this fresh veneer is looking so nice. Adding some separation. This is antique walnut gel stain we're using on the edges. We're protecting the garage door with some plastic and cardboard here and spraying lacquer. So this is a fresh backer cut for the mirror. This will go behind the mirror. The original one was just coming apart a bit too much. We always try to use vintage wood when possible. This was a 1930s piece of leftover wood. Preparing to attach the drawer compartment to the base. So we're looking at the sheen on this mirror backer. It was kind of uneven. Glossy in some areas and flat in others. We don't want to completely refinish it so what we're going to do is use some steel wool to knock it all down a bit. We will then spray semi-gloss lacquer over all of it to make it more uniform. Adding some natural stain to that fresh veneer. It's going to bring that wonderful bookmatched waterfall pattern back to life. Look at that. We're using L brackets to attach the top now. These worked out well. We got them from our local hardware store. And here's a preview of how that table is going to look. We want it to function either as a hall table or a makeup vanity. Now the exciting part. We're going to reupholster the seat of the bench. First we're cutting a piece of upholstery foam. This is technically a turkey cutter but it works so good for foam. We're going to round the edges. Make a nice smooth transition. Next we're adding a layer of muslin fabric. This is sort of a preliminary upholstery job. If the future owner wishes to reupholster this, this will kind of hold everything in place. Dacron will add just an extra layer of comfort. And now we are ready for the fabric. We've been looking forward to this. We found this on Etsy. It was actually in Istanbul, Turkey. This is a premium fabric that we ordered. The design was inspired by Gustav Klimt. Klimt was heavily involved in the Art Nouveau movement. So we think his work and his style goes so well with furniture like this. Even though this isn't Klimt, it definitely has some of the spirit of his work. There we are. Looking fresh. Looking new. We're excited to put that back together. So this is trim unfinished on the right and what we did to it on the left. We think this will add just an extra element on the side of that drawer cabinet. We also have a piece of trim for the upper portion. We've rounded the edges to go with the natural curve of that routing job. We will stain that and apply it later. We went darker for that beaded trim on the lower portion. The upper trim we want to match the center of this table. I think we've got enough clamps and tape here. Just to make sure it stays on there. We've got it glued but we're adding nails now. Just three per edge. Using a nail punch to drive it in just a bit further. And furniture wax. After we've got those filled we will dust it with lacquer. So we're drilling a hole through the top of the crown on this mirror backer. This is a part we've really been looking forward to. This hole that we drilled is for wiring for a sconce that will be at the top of this mirror. Look at the art deco patterns here. We special ordered this. This leaded glass sconce has a strong art deco aesthetic to it. This set has both art deco and art nouveau elements so we're hoping to emphasize both of them. We're really happy with the colors there. Returning to the drawer that was patched and sealed earlier. It's time to bring up the lacquer powders. I'm trying to improve on this skill. It is challenging. As they dry they change colors so you really need to get a feel for these products. Thinking that should do. Next we're moving on to this key hardware. Looking a little beat up. That fortunately came off without too much trouble. Started out with just steel wool and then moved over to Bar Keeper's Friend. Sprayed a little bit of water on that paper towel as well. And look at this. There's a solid brass plate on the top edge. Shining up beautifully. That was a nice surprise. Huge upgrade. Getting ready to put that key escutcheon back on the front soon. So these are the handles. We've already painted them gold and then coated them with clear lacquer. Added this black and as soon as it dries we're going to take it off. Just to get it down in the grooves. See how rich those look. Getting those handles on now. And it's time for that shiny brass key escutcheon. What a gem. So we've decided to add some black velvet to the interior of this drawer. This has its own adhesive as well. This drawer is really coming around. Starting to look quite elegant. But you know what? For good measure we're going to add a couple of storage compartment boxes to the inside. These are removable of course. But they also have black velvet inside of them. We've decided to add a piece of trim to the bottom of this mirror frame. This is the longest piece that we have though. It will be a bit of work to extend that. But we're just shaping some end pieces. Using bondo to fill the gaps. Using french lacquer as a primer here before we add color. There was so much detail originally in this set and so we don't want to hold back. It's a lot of work getting this done but it's really starting to come together now. So excited to get the original venetian amber glass back in place. We've added some of our highly coveted Bakelite clips. These can actually go for a good amount of money online. So we're using solid brass oval head screws to go with them. Just another little touch of luxury. You can also see we very carefully placed the wire along the back with a number of P clips. And we've added a dimmer. So you can make this any brightness you want. This is a cord for hanging it on the back. It's rated for up to 40 pounds which is way more than this mirror actually weighs. We're including some hanging hardware as well. One last detail. We are looking at the back of this bench and thinking this handle might be a nice addition. These are the same handles that are on the table that sits in front of this bench. So we're going to go for it. It's just a fun nice artistic addition and you could also use it to pull the bench backwards. What do you think? Is this working? Stepping back to finally see how this all came together. This was probably the most ambitious project we've taken on. Just because there were so many pieces that were worthy of attention and worth holding on to. And just for fun we are bringing back in the end tables that were originally part of this vanity. We have this listed as a full set but we are willing to sell individual pieces if you're interested. The link to our store and all of our furniture products is below but reach out via email for a special discount. One more look at the beginning just reminds us how much work it took to get here but it was so worth it. It's a joy to see all of these pieces back together. Thank you so much for watching until the end and for supporting our channel. If you haven't already please subscribe. We'll be back again soon with another Art Deco Furniture restoration remake. But you're welcome back here at Montford Boulevard anytime.