I made a start today on the restoration of the Space Age Coffee table I previewed on the blog last week. I’m going to go into a little bit more detail on the steps I normally take when restoring an item and how I go about it. Hopefully this will give you an insight into what I do, and perhaps even share some idea’s for your own projects!

STEP 1

The first step for me when performing a full restoration on an item of furniture is to disassemble it. This way you can see what’s good, what’s not, and what needs repairing. Its extremely important to take a great deal of care during this stage as often joints are nailed, screwed, or glued together. If you miss a screw and you start bashing to get it apart you can seriously damage the piece.

With the Coffee Table I was relatively lucky. The Table top and upright supports coming up off the base were only screwed. The triangular support had 2 nails in it and the glue for that joint was old and brittle so it came apart easily. The hardest part was removing the 4 legs from the underside of the base. These were screwed, and glued. What made it tricky is that the base is a veneer, so I had to gently use a chisel to lever the mounting blocks with legs attached up from the surface. 2 came up easily. 2 did not and took a bit more effort to remove along with damaging a small amount of veneer surface under the mounting block.

STEP 2

With the coffee table in pieces (note I am leaving the table top an drawer assembled as they are in good solid condition and easy to work with in their current state) the next step is to assess all the pieces, and see what needs to be repaired/replaced.

With the coffee table I had to –

• Completely re-manufacture one leg.
• Repair the damaged veneer to the underside of the base (this will be hidden once the legs and mounting blocks are re-attached).
• Pump some wood glue into a crack in the side of the drawer to strengthen it up.
• Putty up a few small nicks.
• Clean the years of food and grime built up inside the coffee table top edge.

Tomorrow I’ll be tackling the sanding and re-assembly .