Gustav Klimt Inspired Art Deco RESTORATION Remake

What is the relationship between Art Deco furniture and Art Nouveau? Welcome to Montford Boulevard. The more you look at Art Deco furniture, the more you'll start to find Art Nouveau elements. Though the movements were separate, they also intersected in quite a few ways. Today we're starting with an unusual furniture piece that has elements of both Art Deco and Art Nouveau. Follow along as we highlight both art movements in a bold and colorful makeover. We say this a lot, but here's another Art Deco piece unlike anything we've seen before. Has some very unusual elements to it. Right away we were noticing the funny shapes on the back. This was part of a support for a mirror, which is no longer with this piece. We are intrigued by them, but can't shake the notion that they kind of remind us of a garden gnome or maybe a Santa hat, something like that. Looking at the tops, kind of beat up, but that should restore just fine. Beautiful waterfalls. We're excited to see what the grain looks like underneath there. These handles are beautiful Art Deco in design. Some Bakelite in there. We're excited to get those polished up. This piece has some quintessential Art Deco and Art Nouveau elements. This is why we're so intrigued by it. Got the dovetail joints of course. Oak drawer. On the inside you can see that pencil work that's oftentimes visible in Art Deco furniture. This thing was kind of coming apart, kind of loose in a lot of places. There's a significant gap in there that will need to be closed. What's really interesting though is this is a tray top style often seen in French Art Deco or Art Nouveau furniture. So more of an Art Nouveau top, and then that waterfall just beneath it. You can see how loose that is in the back. We really need to do some structural work here. Somebody tried to put a screw in there, you can see kind of missed the mark. Somebody was trying to piece this together, keep it intact. That snapped off at the top. What really surprised us, this was almost as wide as it is tall. From a side profile it's almost a square. Not sure we've ever seen that before with a vanity. Gonna get this thing cleaned out real thoroughly first of all. Just make sure it's nice and fresh for the new owners. These drawers were really solid, that's fortunate. These were the mirror supports. We're going to take those off before we separate this thing. And this popped apart quite easily. You can see those dowels in there. It's hanging on in the back however, and as we suspected we've got these staples. These are pretty nasty. They were designed to never come out. We've encountered these before in our deco furniture. You can see the split in the back there. I was going to try to tap this out of the other section. It was really holding on. Same thing, starting to split the wood. That just does not want to come out of there. It's not preferable, but sometimes the only option is to break these off, saw them off, then just do your best to get that flush with the wood. We are going to save this center portion. Sometimes we'll put legs on these and make a separate sort of a stand. Really good looking wood, good looking drawer, and that handle is just gorgeous. So here's a temporary side. More of those awful staples. Kind of a zigzag shape to them. Here's your first look at these as nightstands. We have a plan to really emphasize both the Art Nouveau elements and the Art Deco elements. Those movements did overlap. Art Nouveau came first, but some of it was visible in Art Deco furniture as well. There's a modern screw that somebody had put in there. We like the way this looks, the piece with the four ridges in it, so we're considering ways to make that into a backsplash. I know, I know, sometimes it feels that way when we separate furniture, but we think it will be worth it with the final result. Hopefully you'll agree. These vanities with missing pieces, it's just tough to know what to do with them for practical daily use. Plugging these holes, we are using some of the leftover elements, those dowels. Got a good amount of glue in those cracks in the back, and we're going to clamp that overnight. While that's drying, we also got some Bondo in there to finish filling those holes and gaps and cracks, and we're going to remove these handles. We're pretty excited to dig into these. It's about as Art Deco as it gets. Can't wait to see these polished up. Popping that stem out of there, and looking at this old piece of Bakelite, so dark and clouded. These stems turned out to be solid brass. Couldn't believe it. The backer plates, however, were just plated. So we're going to get those clean and then coat them with a fresh coat of gold lacquer. But here's the Bakelite. We're using a polishing compound. It's always so fun to see those freshened up. And there you go. Fresh coat of gold lacquer. Then we'll put some semi-gloss over top of that. Looking brand new and fresh. So look at the before of this handle and the after. Can you believe it? This is from the 1930s. It's just hard to fathom. So we had let that dry overnight. We also dealt with the split where it was coming apart at the top. That's nice and tight now. We got a lot of glue in there. Just using some Lysol Lemon Cleaner here with a wire brush. This trim is in good shape, so we're just going to give it a really thorough scrub. You can see that wood is still intact. I'm going to come back in just with some clean water. I'm going to really brush this thing clean. Time to get into the sanding. Nice durable veneer on here. There is a thick coat of finish. It wasn't until now that we noticed there's actually a crack that ran all the way down the side of this nightstand, the end of the vanity. They had already glued it. We believe this was back in the factory before it was even originally sold. But after sanding, you can see why they decided to leave it. It pretty much disappears with the grain lines. It was probably that old hide glue and it's still very strong, very sturdy. It's behind that shelf mechanism. So we are going to leave it. That is very much intact. That's as far as we dare go with the orbital. Now we have some hand sanding, looking at these Art Nouveau shoes. Art Nouveau is characterized by the more flowing, sinuous lines and shapes, whereas Art Deco is more geometric. But look at the grain in those shoes. We couldn't believe it. Using some stripper on the waterfall here. Admittedly, that should have been done before sanding the top, but we're going to be careful here not to get it up there. Using some steel wool now to remove the original finish and it's coming off just fine. We've got this product to kind of help remove the stripper and prep the wood for stain. Works really well just to get that nice and clean, beautiful iridescent grain in that book-matched waterfall. Unbelievable. I'm going to sand off. This is 400 grit, just getting any remaining finish off of there. Get it nice and smooth and fresh. Now we're looking at the way the trim extends all the way to the corner here. On the other side, they had to notch it out for the center of the vanity. So first off, going to use a chisel just to get this surface flat. Another one of those nasty staples there. Those things are such a pain to deal with. We've got another piece of vintage wood here that we saved, 1930s. Going to cut out a block there just to fill it, but now we need to continue with this trim. And for that, we have this dowel, probably about eighth inch, maybe a little smaller. Pretty close. Just going to knock that down a little bit with the grinding wheel here. You can see that matches up pretty well, so we're going to need eight of those pieces. This is before we glued them down, just testing to see if they'll work. And that should be pretty close. Going to use some Bondo here. We're going to make sure those staples don't leave any bumps or ridges. It's already pretty flush from sanding. It's time to consider these backsplashes though, and what we're going to do, we really do like those ridges. Want to continue that aesthetic with four of them. You can see it was kind of designed to match. So after a good deal of wrestling, we were able to get these to sit flat as backsplashes. You can see that it's not centered however. That's all one piece, the original piece of wood. Never mind how we accomplished that. We don't really have the tools for it. We are not professional woodworkers. Speaking of which, however, recently found a channel called Woodworking with Jerry. We were excited to find this. This guy made dovetail joints on his own. Pretty fascinating. Recommend you check out that channel. Speaking of which, what are you guys watching? Have you seen anything good this week you recommend? Did get those chopped off and centered however, and that's looking closer to what we want. We like that this backsplash is kind of off balance, the way it leans to one side, but we feel it's better centered. Got that trim sanded and smoothed out and it's looking pretty close now. So it's time for stain. We like to use this natural oil stain by Varathane, especially when you've got wood with a lot of character like this. Just let the natural colors come through. The waterfall is what we were really looking forward to seeing and it did not disappoint. Look at those colors coming through. Book matched just so beautifully. And these shoes! It's almost like a little loaf of bread down there. We love the Art Nouveau curves to this piece. Just such a beautiful organic grace. Even though the main Art Nouveau movement had ended shortly after 1910, you can see the influence carried over quite often in Art Deco furniture. The curves are just such a nice contrast to the geometrics that Art Deco is known for. So these backsplashes turned out to be solid wood, it was not veneer. Got them sanded nice and smooth and they are just gorgeous. So glad that we retained these pieces to reuse. Added some stain to the one on the right here. You can see that grain showing through. We're still trying to learn wood styles, wood grains. If you know what that is, let us know. Gonna do several coats of satin lacquer now. So these drawers, we like to use shellac. This one, didn't even notice until now, noir, newer. It looks like maybe a kid trying to figure out how to spell a word or a name. Either way, we sanded that out. That was the drawer for that center compartment. So this one, we actually added oak veneer. There was a stain in this one that we could not get to come out completely, but you can see how well that matches. Adding some amber shellac to the insides of the drawers here. You'll see later on the outside of this piece, we are going to be doing some gold, some things with gold. And so we think this will be a really nice accompaniment. It looked so nice, we decided to do the outsides of the drawer cases as well. Time for some touch up, and there was quite a bit of touch up on this piece. First off, these back splashes. This was all one piece, each back splash, but chopped off and attached on the opposite end just to center these. Adding some lacquer over the touch up. I'm not nearly as good as my dad at this, but we'll do my best here. Got some complex grains on the top. French polish technique. Coming back in with some more graining. That should be enough to make this work. And now we have some back splashes made from original materials. We always like when we can reuse them. So we were getting ready to add some accent lines, details in black here, and look who showed up. This is the neighbor dog Francis. Absolutely hilarious, snorty little bulldog there. So just subtle black accents here. These are the bottoms of the shoes. This will just help the wood to pop a little bit more. Sealing that with semi-gloss now, and here's the effect. That strip actually is wood there with some spectacular grain. So here's where things get exciting. We printed out this painting by Gustav Klimt. This is the portrait of Adele Bloch Bauer from 1907. This painting has quite a history. It was stolen by the Nazis in the 1940s. It was once sold for 135 million dollars. Look at the Art Deco geometric shapes and the flowing organic lines. This is a fantastic example of Art Nouveau. The history of this painting really is just so fascinating. You could make a whole video about it. But Gustav Klimt also worked in nature and did some beautiful flowing rich greens, but his golden phase is really what he's known for and what really ties him to the Art Nouveau movement. He did actually use gold leaf in this original painting. So we have this cut out according to the frame of this piece. Making a border here that's going to be black. Going to help this painting pop just a little bit more. We don't need to make this entire side black, just a bit of a border here. Here we go. The tape pieces are just to maintain the distance before we attach this canvas print. Got this printed on a quality canvas here. This is Mod Podge. We are working in the gloss finish. It's going to give this just more of an oil paint feeling to it once it's done. Notice we do use quite a bit of this adhesive. Fortunately this will disappear just fine. You've got a bit of time to kind of stretch and move your fabric before it adheres. It is good to keep the surface wet. We're just spraying some straight water on there. Using a squeegee now to make sure we get the excess out of there. We've done this a number of times and we tend to use more and more as we figure out the process. It just helps make sure that your artwork stays adhered permanently. And the more we use this product the more we trust it. You want to make sure you get it off the sides as soon as possible so it doesn't dry there. If it does you can use light steel wool to get it off. Might need to touch up the surface or add a little bit more finish again afterwards. You can see his signature there. That's fun. We pretty much use that whole painting. It is a square format. I'm going to pop off these caster wheels while we have this on its side. We like to replace them with these fresh cleats. It just doesn't make sense to be rolling nightstands around with those caster wheels and they're kind of squeaky and rickety. Getting these handles back on and look at that beautiful bookmatch. It's almost like a butterfly pattern. Stunning. We were looking forward to getting these fresh handles on all throughout the process. What a treat. Does that not just scream Art Deco? Look at that handle. Getting the drawers back in and with that she's ready for her close-up. Looking at the original again. Kind of plain. Kind of flat. We're really hoping to just bring the Art Nouveau elements forward. Art Deco at the same time. We have the option to display these with the wood side or with the paintings. These wood grains, these handles, and the portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer by Gustav Klimt. Just the icing on the cake here. What do you think? Did we take it too far with this makeover or was it appropriate what we did here? Either way let us know. We appreciate it and thank you so much for watching. We have dozens more videos on our channel and we'll be back again soon with more Art Deco furniture. But you're welcome back here at Montford Boulevard anytime.