Bringing back the beauty of old furniture

Hi, and thank you for visiting this blog. I have decided that I would like to share with you some of what I have learnt over the past 35 years dealing with the restoration and re polishing of antique furniture. Over the following weeks I hope to share with you many aspects of the furniture restoration industry including buying, fixing and polishing old furniture. For a more in depth view of what we do at riverside restorations  please visit our main site at  Cornwall Furniture Restoration

Cleaning and re baizing a rosewood card table

This early nineteenth century rosewood card table was purchased in very good condition, except for some minor blemishes around the base. Unfortunately the baize was the worse for wear and needed to be replaced. Deep blue baize goes well with rosewood. After minor repairs the table was then lightly cleaned and re polished and finally waxed

Restoration of antique Windsor chair

An old chair repair

This early nineteenth century Windsor chair had suffered much damage to the extent that the back arm joint had been severely weakened ,resulting in this somewhat basic repair probably carried out about 50 years ago.After dismantling the old repair ans cleaning, the joint was repaired by sandwiching the horizontal wooden rail between two metal plates. The repair was then filled and coloured in as you can see in the image.

The chair after restoration

Restoring a country chair

This late nineteenth century elm and beech chair is one of a set of eight, and although it is not one of my favourite styles, this chair is very comfortable to sit in. It has had a very rough life and has been restored quite severely. The loose joints had been fixed with nails which caused problems when dissassembling the frame. There is also some signs of worm. After taking the joints apart the old glue was cleaned off before reassembling and gluing cramping. The chair was then treated for worm and cleaned down using some mild solvent. The chair areas was then stained and  given a thin coat of french polish. Finally the chair was rubbed down and waxed.