Restoring the Oak Buffet

After making such a good job of the oak cabinet, which I now use for wine glasses and some special antique crockery, I was requested to start on the dining room buffet. This is the before photo - oops, it's got a bottom drawer stained, which is not how we bought it. As you can see it is a blond oak and it is far too light to go with the other oak furniture living in the dining room.
4 weeks after starting the project it is now ready for unveiling. It has been stripped of all the old varnish, sanded, stained, varnished, new felt, cleaned handles and new locks.



Doesn't it look fantastic with the blue felt? The product I used for sealing was Woodoc 10 Indoor Velvet Polywax Sealer. It is so easy to use, in fact, I put it on with a cloth, so there were no problems with brush marks, it doesn't smell strongly and with the wax in it, the woods just soaks it up! It's ideal for furniture where you want a low gloss or matt finish - necessary I reckon, for antique furniture. I also bought the Woodoc Deep Penetrating Furniture Wax which will help nourish the wood for heaps more years.
As you can see in the photo on the right, even the silver has been cleaned!

Restoring a Piece of Old Furniture

Derrick's Dad died just recently and we have had some of the furniture stored in the garage. There was an old leadlight glass cabinet that I thought would be good in the dining room for the wine glasses and decorative cake plates. This is what the cabinet looked like - painted dark brown over medium coloured oak.You can see that I started to strip the legs before taking the 'Before' photo.

Now it is completely stripped and sanded ready for varnishing/oiling/waxing (I used a mixture of all three).


Finally, the completed cabinet in it's new place in the dining room. I'm really happy with how well it has turned out - already there are demands to start on another piece of furniture.