The Carpenters Apprentice

I found the greatest dresser a week or so ago at a second hand store. It was hand made and had interesting inlay. It didn't have handles but a key hole where a key could be inserted to pull the drawer out. It was $40.

It was different than anything I have ever seen. The top piece was added after using wooden pegs to attach it. The top started to come up as one of the pegs broke. It had brass and wood inlay but the brass had come up so much that it wasn't going to be fixable.

I picked up the dresser and then the brakes were frozen on the suburban so it went to the mechanic and the dresser never got home. My eldest has been driving the suburban on a trial to make sure the repairs were working well. I actually was so busy, I forgot about it completely.

My eldest Princess said that while she was serving her mission in the Philippines, she told some of the older missionaries serving with her that the one thing she wished she could learn from her mom was how to refinish furniture. When she told me that, I told her we would refinish the dresser together and she could keep it.

The first item I refinished was this little desk that was my mothers as a child. I was 12 years old and stripped and sanded the desk. I never finished staining it as we moved about then and when we moved to the east coast after I was married, I had to wait until we moved back to the west before I could do much with it.

When I was 18, I refinished this beautiful Birdseye maple dresser that my youngest princess still uses today. It has claw feet and I found it in the basement of a house I was renting while attending college. I asked the owner to let me buy it and I refinished it. It had been used as a paint tester spot and had about 40 different colors on it.

I was thrilled when I found the maple under all that paint. There isn't a room in my home now that doesn't have something I have refinished. I just wish now that I had before and after shots of each. I have done dressers, hutches, tables, chairs, desks, bookshelves, end tables, coffee tables, entertainment centers, chests and other items.

I think my favorite project was my dining room table with the twisted oak bases and chairs. I actually ended up doing the top twice on it because the varnish dried quickly and bubbled. I called Minwax about it but they couldn't figure it out and it wasn't until I was talking to another craftsman that I found out it was the varnish drying quickly that causes that. I won't use that type of varnish again as it did the same thing again.

So, today, Princess number one and I worked side by side pulling off the inlay metal and chiseling out the weird pressed paper under it. It took me hours to figure out that the paper went under the wood inlay as well and kept lifting it up. I figured that if I used a razor and cut around the wood inlay, that the paper would peel up just fine and leave the wood inlay intact.

We are going to try to mix a silver/bronze type paint into wood putty and fill in the inlay area with that and hope it maintains the color. If not, we could paint the area and then varnish over it. It is something I haven't done on a large scale before. I have stained wood putty and had good results but never added paint color so this should be an interesting new venture.

I had dejavue while working today with my daughter and we enjoyed working together visiting about life, men and her boyfriend she was texting throughout the day. It was a wonderful day teaching her tricks about using needles to inject glue under the veneer to glue it back down etc. I am hoping we don't need to refinish the sides but we had no idea how time consuming taking the inlay out would be.

It just gives us more time to visit. She worked on a drawer front while I worked on the top. Here is a photo with the difference using the razor made. On the right, I didn't use the razor and on the left around the birds wings etc, I used the razor and you can see how much sharper the edges are having used the razor.

The thing I love about wood is that each piece is a different character and has to be treated just a bit differently. The texture is never the same and takes up stain differently etc.

The wood is kind of like people, each reacts differently to similar situations. I'll make sure I post photos of the finished product.