I Revamped This Outdated Cabinet into a STUNNING Art Deco Masterpiece!

Hi I'm Brenda and welcome to Phoenix Furniture Studio. In this week's video I'm going to be showing you how I created this gorgeous cocktail cabinet by fully refinishing the outside and adding a beautiful art deco wallpaper in the inside. So if that sounds like something that you'd like to see then stay tuned. Let's start by dismantling the cabinet. This is the best and easiest way in the long run to get it clean properly and achieve the best finish on all your different elements. I'm starting by removing all the hardware and I use my Bosch mini drill for this which makes quick work of most screws. A little tip, keep all the screws and hardware that you remove safely stored in individual plastic bags and label each one with where it came from on the cabinet. This saves so much time when you're reassembling the cabinet later on and avoids hours of frustration. I'm not quite sure what these hold. Let me know in the comments below if you know what these hold. I'm going to have to do some investigations to see what this is for. The ones I've worked on before have the cocktail pick holder so I'm not too sure on these. Of course there's always one stubborn screw isn't there? I was having particular difficulty removing this one so I ended up having to use my nippers to grab hold of it and slowly unscrew it and then I went in with some pliers to finish removing it. I also remove all the mirrors so I can give those a good clean front and back. This piece is made by a renowned Scottish cabinet maker F.H Marshall & Co and it was made in the 1930s when the Art Deco style was really at its peak of popularity and you can see from the label that it was from a range known as Talent. I can't find much more information than that about the maker but yeah I thought that was pretty cool to find when you see the maker's tags on pieces. This shelf needed some serious TLC. To remove it I needed to remove the screws holding it on the inside of the side door compartments and also on the back. That's everything all dismantled now. There was quite a lot of pieces and parts to this cabinet so now that it's all taken apart I can start with repairs and stripping the old finish off. It does look as if some sort of lacquer has just been sprayed over the top so I need to get all of that off. You can see there's some sort of like crazing and crackling going on with the finish so that really needs to come off. The first repair that I'm going to need to do is this bit here. As you can see it's completely split away. I was thinking about wood gluing it but I think it's probably just too far gone so I think what I'm going to do is I'm going to completely remove this piece and then I bought some wood down there which I'll use to replace this. So as you can see it's split there all the way across and I think that's the pressure of the cabinet. That's the side is the hinge side where the cabinet comes down like that and I think the pressure of that has pulled it off. So because this is quite a specific shape to this with these notched out bits and I don't have the skill to recreate that I am going to try and glue this back up and see how sturdy it is. So I need to re-glue this bit here and I need to glue that back onto there so I'm going to do that see how it is. If it's not going to stand the test of time then I'll have to figure something out but I think that's where I'm going to start with this. Before I glue all the pieces together I need to remove these large nails which I'm doing with an upholstery tack remover and a nail remover. So first I want to get some glue in that crack there so that squeeze out there tells me that I've got enough glue in there. Okay next is going to be this part this part here to go back onto there now there's a crack starting there as well so get some glue in there and then I'm going to add some glue to that then that onto there it's just like filling a puzzle back together make sure that's all lined up right let's leave that to set for 24 hours and see how it comes out I'm really pleased with how solid it was once the glue had dried so now it's just a case of putting it back together and securing it in place with some more wood glue and using a selection of clamps to apply pressure horizontally and vertically it's important to give the glue plenty of time to set for a strong lasting repair especially one that's going to be put under pressure when the cabinet is used. Once everything is taken apart then the real work begins sanding. I chose to sand off the old varnish rather than use chemical stripper for this piece so I started with 120 grit sandpaper to remove the bulk of the old finish and then moved to 180 grit for a smoother finish. There were areas where the veneer was coming away so I just glued these back down with wood glue and held it in place with clamps to dry there were many many hours of sanding with this piece and I'm not really sure if it was worth not going through the faff of using chemical stripper but yeah it it was what it was sanding can be tedious but it is a really important part of the process to get a good finish and patience is key working your way through the grits taking your time not pushing down on the sander too hard these are all steps that play a part in getting the best finish after sanding I use mineral spirits to wipe away the sanding dust this gives me a good idea of how the wood will look with a finish and perhaps any spots where the varnish may have not been fully removed any areas that had small pieces of veneer missing and I filled with wood filler I sand those smooth with 180 grit once they're fully dry now for the exciting part applying the finish I'm using Fitties hard wax oil in satin to really make that beautiful walnut wood grain pop I find hard wax oils really bring out the best in the wood grain over other products like water-based varnishes I use a cheap brush to apply the hard wax oil in the direction of the wood grain but I wouldn't recommend a chip brush just because those shed bristles and you don't want to be continuously digging bristles out of the oil as you're applying it then I wipe away any excess oil with a paper towel and I apply two to three coats of the hard wax oil leaving it to dry fully in between normally eight to ten hours I've decided that I want to add some thin gold stripes in various places so I've just laid down some tape and now I am just using a damp cloth just to push that edge down with the frog tape or painter's tape in general I believe it's the adhesive is activated by water so when you push down with a damp cloth that's what gives you a really nice seal so that you don't get any bleed through so I'm just using this thin tape as my width so that it's even all round so I'll just pop this along the edge right now I'll go in with another piece and then this is going to mark off where I need to paint in the gold once that inner bit of tape which I've used to mark the width would be removed like that so that will get painted gold now and it's even all the way along and I haven't had to faff around with a measuring tape or ruler to measure all the way around a piece of painter's tape just to give me some grace because I can be quite a messy painter so if I overshoot with my paint I've got more than just that tiny bit of tape to protect me from getting any on the wood I'm going to be using this Daler Rowney gold finger to do all the gold details this is a really lovely tone gold as it's a wax it won't have any problem adhering where I've already applied a coat of the Fiddies hard wax oil and then once this has dried I'll then spray it with a coat of satin clear coat to seal it in because if I was to apply a coat of it because it's an oil it would just rub this off and then that would mix with everything else and it would just smudge basically as you can see it's really nice tone gold which I think will be perfect for this piece that's the sealer that I'm going to use just to give it a quick coat and I'm just going to peel back the tape now because I don't want it to leave any sort of residue or anything like that and it'll pull off a lot cleaner whilst the top coat and the wax is still wet once that dries you might find it starts to pull some of that up with the tape when you lift it I also use Mohawk blend all sticks for some areas where the veneer needs touching up I really love these sticks they do an amazing job of disguising any veneer blow through or patches or irregularities you just use the blend or stick draw it onto the wood veneer then rub it with your finger to warm it up and blend it in and the best way to use them is to use different shades and build it up gradually to give a realistic depth and variation of colour once you're done and that gives it a really seamless finish with the existing wood veneer this is the paper that I'm going to use for the decoupage, it's a lovely Art Deco design it's from Bobby Beck, pretty, so that is what is going to be on the inside first step with any decoupage project is a new blade into my Stanley knife that's going to give me the cleanest cuts when I'm trimming it down if you use a slightly dull blade then there's every chance you're going to rip the edge of your paper as you're trying to trim it down I'm not going to throw away the old blade the old blade's still fine but it's best to use brand new blades when you're working on projects to apply the wallpaper I'm going to be using this Sikabond PVA glue I've used this on one other project normally I use Mod Podge but it's gotten so expensive that I wanted to try a local PVA and actually this one's really nice and I'll keep using this one I've just popped it down over there I've taken the clamps off the corner so that it lies flat whilst it's drying and I'm just going to put a little bit of a weight I'll just leave that to dry for 24 hours these are the two top drop down cabinet doors so again I'm just going to line them up now with these top doors there's holes where I need to mark so that I can find them to draw the hardware back in if I lose those positions once I've popped the paper on I'm never going to be able to find them again so as I apply the paper I need to gently lift it and just use my standing knife to poke the holes through the paper so that I can know where they are for when it comes time to reassemble I'll go through and mark any holes one of these mini screwdrivers would be better it's all positioned I can slice it down the middle there we go and then again I'm just going to let it lay flat whilst it dries because this is an awkward space to try and cut with the wallpaper I'm going to use some A4 computer paper to create a template that I can just cut directly onto the wallpaper I'm giving myself just a little bit of excess around the edges so that I can trim it perfectly to size so there's my perfectly sized template to go and cut on my wallpaper so here I've got a template for each of my sides and then one for the bottom as well so I can cut it all as one continuous pattern now I can cut my pattern onto the paper perfect I'm just going to trim up the bottom here let's unclamp the repair that I did and see how it's holding up this has been in clamps for about five days now so plenty of time to dry and sure up solid again good so I'll give that a sand and then I need to pop some decoupage paper on there and maybe just fill that in with some wood filler I'm just going to be mixing up some of this high performance wood filler over regular wood filler because I want that where I am filling in with wood I want it to be quite solid because it's already split I suppose where it's had stress over time I want this to be stronger than regular wood filler that shouldn't take too long to dry and then I can come in and sand it the paper on all the doors has had time to dry overnight so now I'm just going to come in with a fresh blade and trim all the excess and then see if there's any places where it hasn't stuck properly and I need to add some more glue see that one there's a bit of a corner pulling up there so I'll need to add some more there a little excess paper there I can feel where there's any edges that are lifting I'm just using some CA glue and activator just to get them stuck down feeling my way along this edge this edge seems to have a few spots where just need to go in and I'm just going to keep working my way around and doing that with all the edges that are loose once the paper and glue has fully dried I apply three to coats of Ronseal diamond hard satin varnish to seal it in and protect it these out on the Cricut using the same design as the paper so I'm just gonna stick them on the inside for the wax that I apply using the stencil before I remove the stencil I spray that with a clear gloss varnish to seal it in and the reason I do that is once I remove the stencil and apply hard wax oil over the entire door I want to make sure that that hard wax oil isn't going to reactivate the gold wax and make it one big smudgy mess so by using that spray varnish it kind of seals the wax in and then I can apply the hard wax oil over top and it's not going to do anything to the gold furniture wax now let's have a quick recap of how the cabinet looked before it was a bit sad a bit yellow and a bit broken after many hours of sanding and gluing and disassembly and reassembly this is how she looks now I ended up removing that wooden handle part that had the chipped off veneer and I replaced it with a lovely long gold bar handle I also made my own cocktail stick holders using these pieces of walnut with commissions like this it's all in the small details and those are the ones that really make the difference I absolutely love how this cocktail cabinet turned out and my client was super pleased with it if you made it to the end I hope you enjoyed the video and possibly even learned something please let me know in the comments below what you thought of this project and if you have any questions at all about the process I love hearing from you don't forget to like this video if you enjoyed it and subscribe to the channel if you want to see more furniture transformations hit that notification bell so you don't miss out on any future uploads thank you so much for watching and I'll see you in the next video bye