IT'S OKAY to Repurpose Antique Furniture 😇

Welcome back to Montford Boulevard. Today we're taking a rare break from Art Deco Furniture. The piece at hand was given to us by one of our customers, and we were happy to take it in. There wasn't much info on the history, so we had to do some digging. What we uncovered was both surprising and pleasant. Follow along as we research, restore, and reshape this fine piece of antique furniture. This vanity is not Art Deco, and normally we wouldn't take something on like this, but one of our customers offered to give it to us. You might recall recently there was an English bar cabinet that we custom designed and refinished for a customer of ours. She's the one who offered us this vanity. We had to do some research because she did not know anything about it. She had purchased it about 20 years prior and has been sitting on it. You can see some dovetail joints there, which are common in Art Deco furniture, but we are thinking this is probably prior to the Art Deco era. Some very good looking wood. It's almost entirely oak, and look at the cuts on these shoes. Very well done. We were thinking these hinges are going to be a hint. They'll probably help us with our research. Also the carving on the front, very precisely done. You can see this oak is just so attractive. That's really why we were interested in this piece. These handles were designed to stick out so you can get your finger underneath them. Kind of clever. There were areas where we could see underneath the finish it looks like the wood is a lighter color, and for that reason we were thinking this is likely English oak. Such attractive wood. There was a funny little clue on the back, not really to the history, but this apparently used to live in a spa and salon. If you look at the wood behind it, lots of little insect holes, so we're going to have to replace that. But we put all of these clues together, did some history and some reverse image searches, and were able to get a bit more information. We found this. It's the exact same model. This was listed for sale in an auction in the UK. Unfortunately there wasn't any information in the description about the history, but look at this mirror. We've never seen anything like this. It's really fascinating. Kind of like a teardrop. The mirror was missing from our set unfortunately. But with a little bit more digging, we found out that the furniture is Jacobean. That is the correct pronunciation. Look at the hinges on this piece. This is the exact same. The Jacobean era was late 19th century, early 20th century, and it carried over in architecture as well. One of the most famous examples of this is High Clear Castle, also known as the Downton Abbey House. We were very excited to realize this. Both the exterior and the interior of that property feature examples of the Jacobean or Jacobethan style. There was once an episode of that show that featured an art deco toaster. We got a kick out of that. What in God's name is it? An electric toaster. I've given it to myself as a treat. You have to set the number on the dial and I had it up too high, but I've got the hang of it now. It was really too bad we didn't have the original mirror. We were tossing around a couple of ideas. We actually have a collection of mirrors, but they're all art deco. This one would have fit size-wise, but the style kind of clashed. So we decided to pull this apart and make nightstands. It seems like not a lot of people really use vanities nowadays, but end tables or nightstands just have so many more applications. And a question, if we were to work in a style outside of art deco, what would you like to see? Every once in a while we would like to take something else on. If you just comment your favorite style or era of furniture, that would help. They had used some really strong glue to hold this together. The damage was admittedly a little bit worse than we were expecting. The plan was to do touch-up with the blend-all lacquer powders on the sides, but that might be a little bit too intense there. Regardless, we want to get all of the loose veneer off there. We have used Bondo to fill in the gaps. Now we're going to sand that and get it nice and even. After that, we'll decide the approach. Sure enough, we could see that English oak right away. We're not going to sand off all of the original finish, but we're going to give a really good scrub here to all of the carved wood and the whole face. The idea here is to cause some separation in the wood colors. We're going to come back in with some stain to get it very close to what it originally was, but we just want some of the carved details to show a little bit better. We've got 2-0 steel wool here. That should help these hinges to shine up a little bit. We hope to leave some of the patina on there, but you can see the difference already. It's pretty dramatic. Another look at these insect holes. Does anybody know what kind of bug that is? Some pretty serious damage. Fortunately, it's pretty much just limited to these back panels. Using the original panel to get the proper measurement here. We keep plenty of wood around the shop from other pieces, and so we are using vintage wood to go on the back there. You can see that separation. It's pretty dramatic at this point, but we're using antique walnut colored gel stain, and you'll see that's pretty close to the original finish that they had. Using a brush just to get in here some of these crevices. We want to freshen this up, but we do want that separation. Just a little bit of light and dark separation. Starting to look fresh already. At this point, we still weren't sure if we were going to touch up these sides or not. We were going to see how well they take stain, but that strong glue just really tore off a lot of the veneer. This is amber shellac going on the inside of each end table. We like the orange boost that amber shellac tends to give. Here's a look at how that amber shellac dried, and you can see it's given some more life to the inside of this end table. These are the shelves that we pulled out and sanded. The one on the left is so compelling. Does anybody have any idea what kind of grain that might be? Probably not the same as the grain on the right, but look at this after we put some of that same antique walnut stain on it. Just amazing. We'd love to maybe make a top out of this kind of wood. Again, if anybody can tell us what this grain might be, we'd like to try to hunt some down. You can see these are already looking so much fresher. Time to address the sides. Making a decision here. We're going to put veneer over top, and we're using the amber shellac. The color doesn't really matter, but shellac is actually a good base if you're going to put adhesive down. Veneer in particular. This is 3M brand veneer oak. Very high quality, and the adhesive is already there. You have to peel the paper off of the back. If you take your time and carefully apply this product, it goes on really well. Just making sure there are no bubbles, no air pockets. This isn't mandatory, but coming back in with an iron is a good way to just reactivate the glue and make sure it really adheres. I've got this quite hot. Not as hot as the iron goes, but probably three-fourths of the power. More of the antique walnut gel stain, and you can see how close it is to the original finish. That's a surprisingly good match. Now we're adding satin clear. This is Prolux brand. Using aerosols is just kind of a luxury. The quality is every bit as good as a sprayer, but less cleanup of course. And just some slight touch up on the frame there. So we found this really interesting joint on the bottom of the shoes. Look at that diagonal slot. Just to hold the pieces together in the corner. Some fine craftsmanship there. We like to add nylon glides just to help protect floors and give this sort of a modern touch. One more look at this fine shelf before we put that in there. Just incredible grain. We're really hoping we can find something like that again in the future. Putting back our custom cut backs. So we're looking at the side and we would like just a little bit more separation from the center to those side supports. And so we have a technique. You can see the top and the bottom horizontals are a little bit darker. This is called shadow toner. You want to be careful just to add enough to darken the wood. The grain will still show through. You can see the difference from left to right. It's very subtle what we're doing here, but it will add just a bit more depth to the final product. Now we're going to cover that with satin lacquer. You can see the difference there. Not too intense, but it just adds a little bit more character. We think the lacquer is still drying. That's the look that we're going for. So now just one final coat of satin to even this all out. And this set is hopefully ready to live in the Downton Abbey house. Could you not have spared me that? One more look at the before and the after. Hopefully you'll agree that these make a beautiful nightstand set. The veneer here matched so well, it's hard to tell which is the original and which is the veneer that we applied. It's that quality 3M veneer. It was really a pleasure to work in the Jacobean genre here. Again, if you have a preference, if there's something you would like to see, please let us know. Generally we're going to stick with Art Deco, but we'd love to experiment here and there. Thank you so much for watching till the end. We'll be back again soon with another video, but you're welcome back here at Montford Boulevard anytime.