Children’s Checkers Table Set

Checkers Table Before

Checkers is a favorite pastime of many people, young and old. I remember growing up with checkers and getting really angry when my brother would beat be. He called me a “sore looser.” Well, who wants to lose? I didn’t. This little table had a well-worn checkerboard center made of very thin plastic which had seen better days. The plastic was peeling up and was simply not fixable. 

Checkers Table After

We made a few suggestions to our customer on how to refresh this table with a “new,” yet original look that could have been created originally and would last for many years to come. 

We decided to create a new checkerboard center by using wood instead of plastic or glass mosaic (another cool choice). This required two types of wood, walnut and maple, cut into even widths and the length of the center section, then cut the glued sections to rotate them180 degrees which created the perfect checkerboard. It worked swimmingly well and looked fabulous. Once the checkerboard center was done, the table was stripped and refinished along with the little seats. The finished checkerboard table with the perfect stain was indeed a work of art upon completion. Kudos to my husband, Jim, who can make miracles happen with wood.

Table Set Before

Table Set After

Checkerboard Antique Card Table

 

Card Table Before

Card Table After

Every once in a while we get a totally unique piece of furniture that is one in a million. One of the many aspects of furniture restoration is the wide variety of items that come our way. It’s always a surprise! At times the surprise comes when we see it. Other times the surprise comes after we remove the years and years of grime to reveal the beauty beneath it. This antique card table with a checkerboard center was such a piece.

It’s hard to know origins of furniture, such as how old an item is, where it was made, what kind of wood is was made from. We have seen mostly oak, walnut, cherry and even some more exotic woods such as bloodwood and olive wood. At times we’ve seen wood we can’t easily identify. With this unique table we quickly realized it was made of many types of wood combined to create a work of art which ended with a center design in a checkerboard or chess table.

However, it was completely covered with years of grime, dirt and who knows what else. Hidden away in a garage for over thirty years, this table was likely overlooked and became part of the back storage of the space it occupied until my customer yanked it out with the intention of getting it refinished. It looked like a major undertaking since there were many pieces of wood missing that would have to be replaced as well as all that grim removed with stripper and carefully sanded so that none of the wood would be destroyed in the process. And yes, each piece of wood you see has been individually placed into the table! This alone makes it a highly unique work of art. 

Once stripped, the gorgeous wood beneath was exposed. It was comprised of maple, bird’s eye maple, walnut and mahogany. Since many of the original tiny pieces were missing, it was necessary to cut and carefully place each missing piece in its place so that it blended in with the table and look as if they were always there. As you can imagine, this was a very time-consuming process. After all those missing pieces were installed and glued, it was then stained and protected with four coats of strong polyurethane so it will hold up for another one hundred years at least. A timeless beauty can say, “Checkmate.”

Card Table Before

Card Table After

Oak Dresser Hidden by Green Paint

 

Dresser After Stripping

Dresser Before Stripping

This little dresser is similar to a few others we’ve done that had the same overall look and design. However, this one was painted green. In our experience, sometimes when a piece of furniture is painted, there’s a good reason for it. Upon stripping this little dresser, we discovered that one of the drawers had a “patch,” which meant that someone had added a different type of wood that didn’t match the original oak that was used when it was built.

Luckily we were able to apply the stain so that it covered the entire piece in a way that looked as it would have looked originally. Likely, it had never been stained, just painted after it was built. It was old though.

When painting furniture, it usually doesn’t matter if wood styles are mixed because the paint covers it all evenly. But when a person wants something stripped and stained, refinished per se, if the wood is patched with non-original wood, this results in a variance of stain colors since different types of wood accept stain differently. 

A good example would be if you apply a dark stain to a light wood such as pine, it would certainly darken the original raw wood but wouldn’t be as dark as if you used the same stain on walnut, which is a darker wood to begin with. It’s always easier to go darker upon refinishing/restoring but much harder to go lighter. Not to say that it isn’t possible to do this as it all depends on the type of wood that was stained originally. Sometimes you simply don’t know what the raw wood will look like until it is stripped as years and years tend to oxidize the wood, making it darker than the original stain. Most of the time the wood, when stripped and completely sanded, is much lighter than the old finish. This allows for plenty of stain choices as it is fun to experiment with how the various stains draw out the wood’s original beauty. This is one of the most rewarding aspects of refinishing...seeing the final results when applying the stain. Ah, it’s pretty once again!