Are 2 Better Than 1? Art Deco RESTORATION

Today we're working on a very special commission. This is a beautiful 1930s waterfall art deco vanity. This is one of several pieces we're doing for a customer who lives next door in Alabama. We are in Marietta, Georgia to the east. Look at the waterfall on that lower drawer. And these handles, we love this style. We've worked with that before but those are rare. This liner very fortunately turned out to not have any adhesive on it. Comes right out. Some nasty water damage. This does look to be savable. Look at that inlay wood in the center. That was a clue as to who designed this piece. Such thick wood. This solid vanity spared no expense. It was these carved shoes, however, that helped us confirm who designed this furniture piece. Leo Geranic was a prolific furniture designer. He contributed to more companies than any other known designer, including Haywood Wakefield, Broyhill, and Bassett, which produced the piece we're working on today. Leo was born in 1900 in Grand Rapids, Michigan, which was, for a time, the epicenter of furniture production in the United States. For much of the late 19th and early 20th century, Grand Rapids was known as Furniture City. Hundreds of factories in West Michigan produced dining furniture, bedroom sets, office desks, and cabinetry using locally harvested American hardwoods. Even among so much furniture production, Geranic stood out for his innovations and designs. Here's a prime example of a Leo Geranic designed furniture piece. You'll notice multiple waterfalls, the ornate inlay wood pattern in the center, and the spectacular carved wood shoes, all of which are present on the vanity that we have. Really helps us to appreciate these pieces more when we can understand who designed them and worked on them. Got a couple loose little pieces in here. Some nice applique. We will save that. It's kind of hard to read, but we can make out JDB on the back. The B for Bassett. Fortunately, this piece is not attached all the way across, but we do see these nasty staples. Those things are so hard to deal with. We are going to separate this piece per the request of our customer, but let's dig into this and see what we can do with another restoration remake. Welcome back to Montford Boulevard and welcome to the unique era of Art Deco Furniture. Today's project came from out of state. We are again in Tennessee in the town of Cleveland. While we were there, we got a tour of this incredible historic building. It actually used to be a private home for several generations. The family eventually donated it to the local university. Today it functions as a library and a history center. You can see there's quite the collection of vintage furniture. We learned that this building was constructed in the 1850s. Quite a bit of history. Look at these room dividers. So this table in the center of the room is a replacement. There was one there previously that was damaged. A plant was sitting on the center of it and when it was watered, the plant leaked. You can see it ran all the way around the side of the table. We didn't have our full touch-up kit on hand, but they asked us if we could just improve it a little bit. These are the legs for that table. We spent probably a half hour on it. Got it as good as we could. This table is going to be moving on, so we got it about maybe 70 percent. If we had it in the shop, we could take that a bit further. But jumping in on this project, the customer requested a set of nightstands. So we're going to be converting the rest of this vanity into nightstands. Fortunately, we found the missing handle in that drawer. Pulling some junk out of here. Fake flowers. That might be part of a watch. We've got Luigi in a frog costume, so definitely some children in the household. This looks to be some sort of garment. Maybe a lady's sports bra. So first off, we're going to remove this board across the back. This is so much better than having the pieces connected all the way across with one piece of wood. So we won't have to cut this. Giving it a good push. Absolutely nothing. It's these staples. These terrible things. I'm going to try a new technique today to hopefully get these out of here without too much damage. These things really should be outlawed. Can access it much better now. Here's a vice grip. I'm going to see if we can rock it out of there. Look at that. That's the first one we've ever removed intact. Now some of them did break, but this is much better than usual. See these terrible things? They weren't ever meant to come out. Looking at the underside, and again you can see how thick those shoes are. This is a heavy piece. I'm going to try to very carefully use the pry bar to not damage it. Separate this just one millimeter at a time. It's going very well, but there was one place that was sticking here. You can see some veneer damage. It was this corner block, that triangular structure there, with glue on it unfortunately ripping off some of the veneer. So we've got it apart now. A better look at that damage. That is manageable. Looking at the center section here, you can see some of that veneer that ripped off. I'm going to see if we can salvage some of that and glue it back on. So here's the first look at the nightstand set. We think this is going to be very attractive. This side in remarkable condition. There's a little bit of residue that should sand off. Hoping that these horizontal lines will sand out as well. I'm going to take off these shoes. Aren't they so elaborate? So many different elements, a couple nails, a couple screws. They're just easier to deal with if you remove them first. This one has two tiers to it. Again, look at how solid that is. So this was a surprise. We removed this end cap and check this out. Kerf cuts in the shoe. So this is technically a triple waterfall piece. We did not expect that. The drawer has the kerf cuts as well and the top waterfall. So that's quite impressive. We've got some glue underneath the veneer. We've got a trick we learned from one of our viewers. This is parchment paper that will keep the clamp from sticking. It does not stick to glue. So that's very handy. Again, look at how elaborate these shoes are. What a work of art by Mr. Geranic. We'll give this thing a good scrub. Giving it a nice fresh start for new generations. We're filling some of the gaps. We found this piece, very fortunately, minor damage compared to other pieces that we've separated in the past. While that dries, we're stopping next door, paying a visit to our friend Frances. Her owners are moving, so we're helping to remove this stair lift. We are going to miss Frances so much. This may be her last appearance unless we visit them in South Carolina, which we hope to do. So we've patched in some Bondo wood filler for the nail holes. Gearing up for sanding, but we've got some more repairs to do first. Pretty significant gap left where the mirror used to be. We've got this vintage piece of Art Deco wood that we've saved. That should do. We've got enough for both nightstands. We also decided to continue this trim along the back. The center section has a piece that we believe we can cut and use for that continued trim. That should do. And here is the piece of trim that we ripped. Interesting fact, the existing trim is lacquer veneer, but this is real wood grain in this piece that we cut. We'll have to pull some tricks to make that match a little bit better, and we want to continue with a separate block, like so, to continue with the pattern. That should work though. We will address the color later on. Time to get into some sanding. This is always such a relief to get the old finish removed. Quick look at the before and after. Doesn't that feel so much better? We can't wait to get some stain and finish on there again. We're using stripper on these shoes. Just be a little bit too complex to try to sand all of that and these grooves. They are cleaning up nicely. We'll let everything dry for a little bit. Getting into stain right away. This is simply natural stain. Look at the ribbons. Stunning bookmatch there. Such vibrant color. Especially on these shoes. And how about that bent trim? We're wondering if they soaked those wood pieces in water or how they achieved that. Looking so much fresher. We will be adding some more accents later. Funny we didn't even notice it until now. Look at this piece broken off of the drawer support. We'll make a template. That should do for starters but we'll need to continue with that ornate trim. Got a piece of cord around here. It will require some carving. There's the result. Almost looking like a little flute. That should do with a little bit of color. So we glued this piece on. Waited for it to dry. Testing out the trim. The glue is holding it in place and now we will reinforce with nails. That's looking like it should pass. And check these out in the sun. We've sprayed some lacquer. Look at the color changing as you rotate it. Iridescent effect. So much fun to see this wood refreshed. We're going to freshen up the interiors of these drawers with shellac. It's an easy quick way to make these so much more vibrant. And it's time to get into these handles. We've been looking forward to this. I'm going to remove that light coating. It's almost tempting to keep them in that silver look. We don't think that would really go with this set though. Adding gold lacquer. Look at how clean that looks. We are going to add black into the crevices after that's dried a bit. First we're getting into stain. We'll use golden oak on the tops and natural stain on the sides. The drawers had enough color on their own. But we're giving this just a little bit of a boost. Everything's looking good, clean and fresh. We will let it dry for a day. Back on those handles and we've added black in the crevices. It's a multi-step process we've demonstrated several times on this channel. That's one of our trademark looks. And we're going to add some accents to the shoes as well. We're going to add some lacquer now. You can see how rich these tops are going to look. Fortunately in good enough preserved condition. Lacquer on the sides as well. We do have some significant repairs to do at the bottom. Touch up rather. We're going to get right into that. The lacquer does dry very quickly. This might look like significant damage. But it's usually much worse when we separate these vanities. These blend all lacquer powders are a little tricky. They do change color as they dry. But then when you revive them with lacquer you can see their true color. So it takes a while to get a feel for these. But they are very effective for furniture touch up. Working on some of those nail holes as well. We've got a balled up rag with some French lacquer. You can see those spots disappearing as we brush them. That was the dried lacquer powders. Now this is the tricky part. This is where that worst damage occurred. Now that color does need to be just a bit more pale. This will be a sufficient base coat though. Using the French polish technique. It's still a bit orange so we're coming in with some lighter. Added some white actually. We'll then do a bit more of the French polish to blend it in. It's getting there but it could be just a bit darker. So this is black shadow toner. Trying to be very careful here just to knock it down a little bit. Looking pretty good though. It's time to address this trim. Again this is actual wood grain and we need it to match that painted lacquer veneer. Adding just a couple puffs of shadow toner. Golden oak color. And then this is black. Just to darken it a slight bit. And that's looking pretty good. We're going to do the same for these little pieces. Time to address that repair from earlier. And that should do. The drawer is going to mostly cover that up. We just need that support back in place. So we numbered these complex shoes just to make sure we knew how to put them back together. Look at the way that applique is curved around the waterfall. What a work of engineering. Must have been challenging constructing these pieces. We sometimes imagine hot factories maybe with no air conditioning. People working so hard to generate these gorgeous art deco furniture pieces. Again this is one of the more elaborate shoe designs we've ever come across. Adding our nylon glides just makes these so much easier on the floors. And we decided at the end just to add a few more accents. Just a little bit of black. And an additional gold stripe along the bottom of the shoe. So exciting to put these back together. There are these little beads that run across the center of the trim. We've got a furniture marker here and we're just adding a little bit of gold there as well. Getting ready to put our custom trim back in place and we are getting close. We're using slotted screws. There were quite a few holes in the back and we're going to fill them with screws just to make that look a little bit cleaner. Finally getting the drawers back in place. We don't stop working on these pieces until we love them. And you know what? I think we're there. Stepping back to look at the finished piece and we are admiring the design work of Leo Geranic. It's so fun to finally be able to identify this style that we've worked with before. The carved shoes. The gorgeous handle choices. Quintessential Art Deco. One more look at the beginning. The design work was all there. We just wanted to turn up the volume on the wonderful Art Deco aspects of this piece. Once again this was commissioned by a customer but check out our store below. We do have a sale going on this weekend. Thank you so much for watching until the end. We'll be back again soon with another Art Deco Furniture Restoration Remake. But you're welcome back here at Montford Boulevard anytime.