Tuesday, February 7, 2012

Just had to start this refinishing job and some new store pics...

As promised in the last post, here are some pics of my friends Henredon table that they have entrusted to me to bring back up to speed along with a few better shots of our store. First the table:



Now, I'm familiar with the Henredon company having delivered retail furniture for many years and always associated the name to much more traditional furniture albiet the company was usually on the cutting edge of design. The friends I'm doing this partcular project for advised that the original owner had purchased in the late 50"s. Since Heredon, on a search has been in business since 1945 originating in North Carolina, I suppose this may be true, but this style was not something I would have expected from Henredon.
I love the atomic lines of this table! Unfortunately I didn't have my camera with me and will post some pics of the chairs later although I haven't yet been recruited to work on those. Here's some pics of the redo: Yes, this will take more than one post before I'm done...


This is a large table even with no leaves.inserted. It's 51"inches round and I barely have room to work on it in my limited shop space. It only had one major chip in the veneer on the top and otherwise had normal wear and tear for a piece of it's age. Sometimes you only see the damage done after you atart on a piece as was the case here...


Many of the scratches and gouges were not originally visible without taking off the top  layer of lacquer and stain and some were a bit deep. Fortunately, they were workable as the veneer was really thick and could stand some abuse. If this were a new piece from a retail furniture store today, it would go in a dumpster with no chance of redemption. Here's how we look after the final sand:


After stripping it appeared the veneer was pecan as it had a bit of a pinkish tint. I test stained a bit of one of the table leaves with some Early American stain and thought it looked like a good match so I went ahead and did the whole table last night with the stain. This morning as I looked again, I was disappointed as the finish had too "reddish" a tint to match the original. Back to the drawing board and will have to wait for the stain to dry down to take off.
Hope to get some "after" pics up within a couple of days. My customers/friends have opted for a urethane finish as opposed to a lacquer top coat as this is going to be a piece that gets daily use. It needs to look good, but has to be durable as well.

Couple of quick shots of our new store that's finally up and running and we've had some great feedback so far. People are lovin' the new clean lines and more minimal approach for the MCM look!




These are some shots that are not on our FB page so if you'd like to peruse some other pics feel free to like us there at: http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/A-Modern-Line/148433368524352?sk=wall   I hope to get  our new website up and running soon along with the myriad of other projects that I have to attend to. If I could clone a fully adult version of myself I think we would still have more to do than I need to get done : ) .....




4 comments:

  1. That is a truly beautiful table your friend has entrusted to you! Take good care of it for them. And the little Mulhouser chair...that ain't gonna be there long!

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    1. This table is truly beautiful and has already proved to be problematic in matching the finish. It will be another learning curve for me but I will never disappoint a custommer no matter the price! Sometimes you just have to bite the bullet and learn from your experience...

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  2. Store looks wonderful, and I can't wait to see the finished Henredon.

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    1. It's going to take a bit longer than anticipated to get this table ready. I hope to be able to restain in the next couple of days to get to match finishes and will post on some success story (hopefully) soon with some hard earned advise to share...Thanks for taking a look at the store pics and hitting the FB page...

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