Starting a new project. I acquired a beat up, and I do mean ‘beat up” china sorta cabinet. Half of it had been brush painted grey and the other half is a well, brutalized white oaky stain of sorts. Yvonne has needed a China cabinet and I was ready to build her one but since I found this one and with the prices of wood being so high, I just figured I’d just see what I could do with the road kill. Here’s one before and after door. I haven’t applied the total finish on the redone door but it kinda gives everyone an idea of what’s going on with it.
Very nice. I love rehabbing old furniture...me & Homer Formby go way back. When you say "found," may we assume this was abandoned at roadside? Did you have those appliques laying around from another project?
@Bobby Cole, I like what you've done so far. Looking forward to seeing it completed but will settle for the phases.
Technically, the cabinet would have been a roadside item but I saved it and a kind of a grandfather clock to boot. When the sheriff’s dept puts people out, their stuff goes on the roadside and since the tenants didn’t want them any longer I grabbed ‘em. Now, the filigree is another story. I am seriously thinking of buying a CNC router even though I have no problem hand carving what I want, it takes a lot of time. I have seen a lot of pictures of some of the work a good machine can do but I really wanted a sampling so I bought some. I’m not real fond of on-lays because I already do a lot of inlay work and carved stuff but I decided to give it a try and see what i could do with it. I think the next time I use the stuff, I’ll trace everything out and inlay the filigree. Along with experimenting with on-lays, I’m also getting a lot of experience with CA glue since the other door obviously had a drugged up foot kick it in and split it in two places. It’s expensive but a little goes a long way and it cures within seconds. It doesn’t replace good old Elmer’s but I now have more options.
I think the on-lay gives it an old-world charm and does look good with the darker finish. I enjoy inlay, but also sometimes an on-lay has a better effect than an inlay. The beauty of an on-lay is it can be removed if it doesn't work out.
I will have another piece of filigree just below the head piece and behind that I’m working on using lighter and darker hardwood inlays to convey a more in depth three dimensional look. Kind of an op-art piece behind the scrolling. When I have it roughed out, I’ll throw in a picture.
Could be. Igpay atlinlay with emphasis on the lay part. Enough lays and we’ll have the innards of an adult book going.
Behold, the cabinet. Most of the sanding is finished but the outside edges were so beaten up that there was no way I could repair them so I grabbed one of my routers with a 3/4” round-over or shoe mold bit and rounded the edges off. I did think about making some 90 degree molding to cover the edges but since the thought of going rogue and burning the conventional is always appealing to me, I rounded them. Simply put, I like the flow of it. One of the main features of a China cabinet is the crown of which there is none. There’s a light area on the wood where there used to be a 5” piece so I’m going to get busy on the bandsaw and router table and produce one which might be ready by this afternoon….or not.
Every queen deserves a crown so ……. I still have a lot of sanding and fading in with the stains not counting all the scraping I’m going to be doing on the face and insides then more stain but it’s coming along.
One thing I might need to clarify is when I write, “fading” in of stains. First, i do not like to make old stuff look new but rather to bring it back to life and using various shades, tints and textures of stain can do just that. In the case of the cabinet I’m playing with, the original was made by laminating 2 1/2” slats of pine in a chopping block fashion. The thing is, none of the grains match up and even the wood itself is from multiple stocks but using the right stains I’ll be able to produce what looks like solid sheets. Here’s an example of fades and shades in real life. The cabinet door on the left was burnt from a stove fire so I was asked what I could do with it. I had a couple of options: I could replace the burnt door and paint the entire set of cabinets including the lowers. Or, I could sand the burnt door and make them all look the same. I couldn’t find a picture of the finished lacquered product but this is a pic of it before I hit it with the clear.
I was trying to edit the picture whilst you were trying to look at it. I’ll ask Yvonne to turn it right side up.
Good solution, Bobby. One thing you might decide next time... a lot of kitchen design now has different colored cabinets on the top and bottom. I've been thinking about having my cabinets painted, and if we do then I plan to have the island cabinets painted a different color from the wall cabs.