Check it out! The restoration of the Space Age coffee table is complete and I am very happy with the end result! Definitely would be the centre piece of any Mid-Century inspired lounge room.
Hopefully you have enjoyed the process from start to finish and perhaps even learned a small thing or 2 about what we do here at Still Broke Enterprises.
Keep an eye out for this beautiful piece in the Online Store shortly.
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 –
Tomorrow I’ll be tackling the sanding and re-assembly .
With the restoration of the Parker chair complete I thought I’d share a few photos of my next project.
This Victorian Ash coffee table has a real space age design to it with it’s lunar landing craft style legs and half floating table top due to a clever triangular design supporting piece hidden away under the centre of the table top.
Unfortunately this coffee table has seen better days. The top is caked with food build up (yuk!), scratches to the painted underside of the glass top, various stains to the finish, one leg has been replaced with a not so matching piece and the draw doesn’t quite slide correctly.
With all restoration projects you need to weigh up whether or not the amount of time and effort you put into a piece will be worth the end result. Sometimes not, so you will pass on the piece or approach it in a different way – aka – http://www.stillbroke.com.au/blog/2012/03/21/mirror-mirror-on-the-wall/
This one however for me ticks all the boxes needed to perform a restoration. We have –
Looking forward to making a start on it!
