Furniture restoration and dating?

Given the diverse nature of this place, I'm going to assume at least one or two of you are into repairing, restoring or otherwise rejuvenating old furniture. Not necessarily antiques, but antiques are cool too.

Since buying an older house, I'm finding myself increasingly interested in older pieces of furniture. Partly because Ive caught the restoration bug and seeing things brought back to their original state (or as close as possible to it) is awesome. And partly because I feel like restoring an old house and then filling it with new modern style furniture doesn't suit it well. I've always liked old stuff, it would seem old furniture is just another old thing I've grown to appreciate.

What got the ball rolling on this thread though has been a few acquisitions over the last couple of months. First I got offered a few pieces from a friend of my parents who was cleaning out her mother's place after she passed. I ended up with a marble topped wash stand from (what I'm assuming) the late 1800s, along with a chest of drawers and a fire screen. None of it was high end well cared for antiques, and the drawers and wash stand were both the proud owners of some very ordinary paint jobs. But the wash stand just kind of had a look to it I liked and figured it was worth having if only to get the paint off it and see what was hiding underneath, so they followed me home eventually.

Then, a couple of weeks ago, I was driving past a local book and bric a brac shop that often has old junk for sale, and saw an old lounge set out front. Curiosity got the better of me and next thing I was parting with what I felt was a pretty fair price for it and again, it follows me home.

Well, I got time the other day to start stripping the wash stand, 5 minutes of work with the heat gun, scraper and a razorblade and I was hooked, the wood hidden beneath the ghastly paint was gorgeous and I spent the rest of the day stripping as much as I could. All in all, it's in decent shape, but I'll need to try and repair one of the drawer pulls and probably remove wood from the bottom of the cupboard to make a new door insert to replace the original that has long since been broken and replaced with a piece of masonite. As for what the wood is? No idea, I'm not great with wood, I've always been more metal and machinery oriented, but I guess I'm going to start learning wood.

After the success of the wash stand, I decided to try the cheat of drawers, it'll move with the heat gun, but whatever the green "mess" is under the top layer of paint isn't nearly as heat gun compliant as the outer layer, it also appears to have leached through the original varnish/shellac and into the wood a bit. I'll persevere with it, but it'll probably end up a total sand back, stain and refinish. It appears to be pine of some type, but again, no wood guy. I've also got no real idea as to it's age, the previous owners remember it from childhood, so it'd be pre 1950's, past that, I got some learning to do.

The lounge set will need some serious cleaning if the original fabric is to be saved, otherwise it may need to be reupholstered. It also needs some tightening up on some of the joints and the wood of the arms and legs will need a little bit of love. Not necessarily a total restoration, but definitely some love to make sure it'll last another few decades. Age has me completely stumped, I've guessed maybe 1920s, but to be honest it's strictly a guess.

In amongst all this I got to thinking about an old sideboard I picked up a few years back, it was painted black, and I never thought of it as an old bit of furniture. I just thought it was from the 80s or something. Well, now that it's in the new shed, not in storage an hour away, I decided it might be worth a look to see if it's older than I first thought (it shares a few styling points with the wash stand). So out come the drawers, dove tail joints. The screws look older than I would have expected and the grain of the backing board seemed very similar to the wash stand. I grabbed the heat gun and started to peel back 5/6 layers of paint. Well, to my surprise, it's solid wood and appears to have alot more age than I first thought. My partner has never been a fan of it, but friends and family have always been drawn to it, as had I. She was very surprised when it started looking like it might actually be old and might actually refinish into something nice. Date and wood type again escape me. I'm hazarding a guess at oak, possibly rift sawn.

So, with that rambling mess aside, I figured it was time to ask if any of you got into fixing up old furniture, what tips and tricks youdbe willing to share and possibly have a spot to put up a few photos and maybe get some pointers in identifying the age of a piece of furniture and what it's made from.

Feel free to show off your own projects if you've got them.

Damn I thought you were looking for a romantic date to restore furniture.

And because a thread like this is useless without pictures.

I'll follow up with more pics later as I take them. Photographing things as I work, along with befores and afters is not my strong suite

In reply to Stampie (FS) :

Well played sir, you get my internet points. Actually sounds like a fun date lol

Dad does it professionally and was a museum curator for a while, semi-retired now.  I think he is helping Keith Tanner with his radios

Restoration in furniture can be as intricate and time consuming as it can be in cars.

Beat advice i can give is go slow, and start out with the weakest cleaning supplies you have before you go up the scale. No matter if it is a detergent or a solvent.

Stampie (FS) said:

Damn I thought you were looking for a romantic date to restore furniture.

I literally thought guy was restoring some furniture and figured out a way to date women as well.... 

In reply to mr2s2000elise :

Poorly titled apparently, my bad. Lol

Mr_Asa said:

Dad does it professionally and was a museum curator for a while, semi-retired now.  I think he is helping Keith Tanner with his radios

Restoration in furniture can be as intricate and time consuming as it can be in cars.

Beat advice i can give is go slow, and start out with the weakest cleaning supplies you have before you go up the scale. No matter if it is a detergent or a solvent.

Sound advice, and I'll bear it in mind on future piece's. unfortunately with the exception of the lounge, everything I'm currently dealing with has been bastardized by previous owners, so I'll have to try and tread a fine line between preserving some age and undoing past wrongs.

Meanwhile, your dad must have seen and worked with some awesome stuff over the years. I feel like being a museum curator wold be extremely satisfying if you're into that sort of thing.

In reply to daeman :

He has mostly worked in Florida.  The Ringling, Goodwood Museum, Museum of Florida History in Tallahassee, consulted with FSU and UF, the Capitol, all sorts of places in Florida.  Also spent a year in Colonial Williamsburg and studying at the Smithsonian. 

Definitely saw some interesting things.

Floor looks good, by the way. 

In reply to Mr_Asa :

That's quite the resume, don't spose he knows what those weird stick things are that grm is unable to identify?

Seriously though, he must be a wealth of knowledge. How does one get into museum curatorship?

In reply to Appleseed :

Very much appreciated thanks mate. They've come up pretty good, still need to be finished, but I'm waiting till I've done the internal masonry work before I do anything else with them. Wasn't able to save as much of the original boards as I'd have liked, but  you can walk from the front door to the back door on the same boards that the original owners did, so that's as good a compromise as I could manage.

As much as I don't like losing the age off of the old boards, there was no way to adequately match the rest of the house and not have it look like fake patina. So I'm refinishing the old boards to match the new and then I'll let them all age together.

In reply to daeman :

I've sent those to him and he read through the thread and he is just as frustrated as the rest of us.

Its kind of like this place.  There is a smallish community of interconnected people and you can't help but make connections.  He had worked for the museum (and as you can see above, others) before as a contractor and eventually he decided a state job would be beneficial. 

I have done a few pieces.  Not an expert, but I work with finishes and wood enough in my job at the theater to be effective at not sucking at furniture restoration.

This 4-post bed I grabbed for $20 and simply fixed up some of the finish.  The one post had most of the finish worn off the finial.  It looked like someone had hung their wet shower towel on it and over several decades it just tacked up the varnish.  I sanded it, stained to match, and rubbed some wipe-on poly I made with regular poly, some Tung oil, and some mineral spirits.  The scroll-y piece in the headboard between the posts was in rough shape.  Almost as if kids had spent years chewing on it or banging their GI Joes on it.  I was going to try to clean it up with an ogee bit in a router, but it wouldn't have gotten all the damage, and there was a big crack in the middle.  Instead, I pulled it out and used it as a pattern to cut a new one from some birch ply and put a band of birch veneer on the edges.  Stained and poly'd, and you can't tell unless you really look

The tri-fold vanity was in pretty good shape, but the top had some staining/damage to the finish.  The previous owner had attempted to minimize it with many coats of paste wax.  I removed the wax and re-poly'd it.  You can stil see where I repaired, so I just keep a lamp on a doily right there.

In reply to Curtis73 (Forum Supporter) :

Always start out with Denatured alcohol on furniture pre 1940's Shellac was and still is a great finish. The nice thing about shellac is denatured alcohol will just melt away shellac and you can just reapply it. Any New shellac will melt into old shellac and make an invisible  repair.  Plus it's tougher and much more scratch resistant than modern plastic based finishes. 
   I'm the words worst painter. That's why I use shellac. I've got a big old barn brush and I slop it on like a drunken sailor.  Yet no runs.  Yeh!  
   

In reply to frenchyd :

Now I want to go restore a Morgan. 

Be careful with any green paint you find while stripping. Arsenic paint was popular in the early parts of the 20th century and is bad stuff to inhale. Same with lead which is slightly less toxic but much more common. Heat gun and stripper are your best options and sanding should be a last option.

I've restored a few pieces, mostly just stripping the old finish and replacing broken hardware.  During the pandemic my mom said she was getting rid of a dresser because it was falling apart and asked if I wanted it.  Every joint in the piece was coming apart so after stripping the old finish (which turned out to be dark grain painted on very light wood) I had to glue the whole thing back together, replace all the drawer bottoms and sand some of the drawers so they would slide easily (they had warped a little).  When I went to stain it I tried to stain it dark but it just wouldn't take stain.  This is it finished after putting on two coats of very dark stain and then a few coats of lacquer.

When I was taking apart the mirror, I took the wood off the back and there was a piece of paper between the wood and the mirror.  I decided to have some fun with my mom, who gave me this dresser, and drew a treasure map on the paper then sent her a pic asking if she had any idea where this could be.  She freaked out and thought I had found a legitimate treasure map so I felt a little bad when I told her the truth.  When putting it all back together I decided to put the map between the mirror and the wood backing so the next person who refinishes it can have a laugh.

My advice is to not worry about screwing up and just have fun with it.  You're not working on priceless heirlooms and given the current condition of the pieces you can only improve them.  As others have mentioned, try to use the most gentle methods first before attacking the old finish with a sander.  Also, if you need to glue stuff together, a little glue goes a long way.  If glue gets on a visible surface, stain will have a hard time penetrating where the glue is, even if you've wiped it off and you'll end up with a discolored spot.

In reply to Mr_Asa :

Figured that might be the case, but thought I'd ask anyways, just incase it'd slipped by. That your dad can't place them either gives weight to the "not a real thing" argument. 

Very interesting, I have been considering offering to donate some time to my local museum because I can see they need the help. Sounds like that's not a bad idea at all.

In reply to Curtis73 (Forum Supporter) :

You're a man of many talents curtis, thanks for chiming in.

Stains and finishes are very new to me, it's definitely going to be a learning curve and some trial and error, but I'm sure I'll get my head around it sooner or later.

I like that vanity, any chance you feel like throwing a few more pictures up? 

In reply to frenchyd :

One day frenchy, one day I'll shellac something in your honour. I feel like you're single handedly raising the profile of shellac in the modern era.

Very cool door by the way, one you made?

In reply to itsarebuild :

Thanks for the heads up, I hadn't considered arsenic as something I may encounter. Lead I was expecting, arsenic, I wasn't. 

I prefer to strip with a heat gun where possible, though I'd like to try infrared stripping at some point. It was suggested to me by a guy who does heritage painting. Agreed, sanding is last resort.

In reply to Schmidlap :

Mate, that looks beautiful! You've done a great job. The treasurer map is funny as, it's definitely going to give someone a laugh or send them crazy one day haha.

I appreciate the perspective, you're right, nothing I'm working on is of high historical importance and most of what I do would be an improvement. 

Glue really can be a double edged sword can't it, I had to do some gluing whilst doing the floors (reattach some split tongues, fix some cracks, lose knots etc) and you can go from not enough glue to glue EVERYWHERE in about half a drop hahaha. I'll definitely be more mindful of it on furniture because it won't get the heavy sanding that the floors will.