How to restore antique furniture, useful tips
Each piece of old furniture was made individually, which makes it unique. Basically, antique products are works of art made of expensive wood and have served several generations. But only certain objects survived to our days, most of them are destroyed by people and time. Such a process as the independent restoration of antique furniture allows you to restore them and return them to our everyday life.
Content
Materials and tools for work
It is important for the restoration work to have certain knowledge and skills, while it is necessary:
- be able to work with wood;
- know how to work with tissues;
- to use a glass cutter correctly;
- have the skills of forging, working with metal.
If there are no such skills, then you should not immediately begin to restore antique furniture, it is better to practice with inexpensive copies, otherwise you can spoil the surface of old structures, after which repair will become impossible.
For such work, you will need tools:
- drill with drills for wood of different diameters;
- chisels 4-40 mm wide;
- plane;
- mallet;
- set of clamps;
- hammer with a round butt.
- a set of various screwdrivers;
- electric and manual jigsaw;
- hacksaw for metal;
- knife;
- square;
- pliers;
- furniture stapler;
- bastard file;
- veneered (a piece of leather, cloth or felt);
- art brushes of different shapes.
Preparatory work
Furniture must be maintained in the room where it will be restored, 3-4 days. On the second day, it is necessary to get out and put aside all the boxes. In the room you need to maintain a constant temperature of 18-24 degrees, humidity should not exceed 75%.
It is necessary to find out in what conditions the furniture used to be. If it was in a damp room, then it will have to be kept at room temperature for 30 days, it is impossible to repair such objects earlier, otherwise the drying of the material will cause the destruction of the wood structure.
Disassembly
The furniture is carefully disassembled into individual parts, this is necessary for disinfection when damaged by insects and fungal bacteria, to recreate the previous finish. First of all, furniture elements that are not rigidly connected to the frame are separated - metal overhead decorations, locks, handles, doors are removed, shelves, drawers are removed. In cabinets fastened with wedge ties, the back wall, side parts, cornice are disconnected, after which all decorative elements are removed.
There is no need to disassemble cabinet furniture, if there is no great need for this, when assembling the product after the repair is completed, curvature and warping of the item may occur.
Sofas, armchairs, and chairs often have weak spiked joints, often they are completely destroyed, for this reason the structure is divided into separate elements, separating the soft parts in advance and everything that interferes with disassembly. Furniture assemblies with strong joints do not disassemble.
Large pieces of furniture and complex joints are dismantled on the floor, small parts, nodes - on a workbench, where a soft litter is laid out. In no case can you forcefully separate any nodes, you must make sure that there are no fastening parts. Maybe you didn’t notice any screws or nails, or there was some glue left, you can remove it by dropping a little alcohol in the seam and after a minute try again to separate the joint. If it did not succeed, you need to treat the adhesive seam with alcohol again.
Soft sheathing of furniture can be very valuable, especially if you have original wallpaper nails. For this reason, it must be dismantled first and very carefully.
Thread and nail connections
When disassembling threaded furniture joints, it is important not to focus on wood. If the screw turns or a screwdriver tries to slip, take a look at whether it is possible to grab his body with pliers or platypuses. If he sits firmly in the tree - it is necessary to drip spindle oil 2 times, wait 0.5-1 hour and try to turn it out again.
If a bent nail is found, inspect the back of the joint. Try to pry it with a flat screwdriver, align it with pliers, hit with a hammer so that its hat comes out a little from the wood. Then carefully pull out with pliers, you can’t use the nail clipper, it remembers the original tree. It is necessary to remove the wallpaper nails by grabbing the rod, otherwise its decorative hat may come off. A heavily driven nail must be rocked or pulled by the parts connected to it so that the hat comes off. If it begins to sink into the wood - repair should be stopped! You have to carefully drill it, separate the parts, and then remove the nail shaft.
Glue joints
All carpentry adhesives that were used earlier in the manufacture of furniture can be dissolved with alcohol. To separate the compound into glue, drip with alcohol along the contour of the part with an interval of 2-3 cm, and then wrap it with parchment paper or film. Soak for 10-30 minutes, after which you need to try to separate the part, if it does not work out, you should repeat the procedure. It is necessary to carefully separate the wooden decor - small elements dry out very much. It is convenient to separate the joints on the glue with a clerical knife, with excessive pressure the segment simply breaks off and the wood remains intact, a thin blade fits well into almost any gap.
Hidden joints of parts on wooden bosses can be ordinary, glued or wedged. It is not difficult to disassemble the usual, the adhesive bonding on the bosses is disassembled with alcohol, drip it onto the parts and carefully separated. If the connection is wedged, then you need to saw it with a knife or a jigsaw.
Cleaning
It is easiest to remove dust and cobwebs with a vacuum cleaner, remove small residues with a soft brush. After upholstery, the old upholstery can serve for a long time (if it has not rotted), new fabrics for furniture are expensive. The material on old furniture can be very expensive - with a tapestry or hand embroidered, and so on.
The internal cavities of furniture and doors are cleaned with a swab with detergent for dishes.Old contaminants will not be cleaned immediately, for this reason the detergent does not need to be washed off quickly, it is necessary to wait up to 5-20 minutes and carry out this procedure again.
After that, a final inspection of the surface is carried out. It will be strange if the furniture surfaces, after eliminating small imperfections (cracks, chips and stains) do not have to be varnished and polished - the old technologies were designed for a long service life. This will reduce work, lower repair costs, and at the same time add value to the product. But in the future it will be necessary to take this into account so as not to damage the genuine coating of the product. If the furniture has not been varnished and after thorough cleaning the wood will look dirty, wax it, like oak products, with wax in beer.
Methods of restoration
Restoring antique furniture in different ways, the main goal of this work is to eliminate the damage that appeared during operation, restore the original appearance and keep it.
There are museum and commercial restoration, in the first case the most important thing is to maintain the current state of the item for a long time, in the second - the main thing is to restore its functionality. With the museum method of furniture restoration with your own hands, the most important thing is to preserve the product, intervention in its structure is performed only in extreme cases.
To strengthen and decontaminate wood, restorers traditionally use natural resins - mastic, shellac, rosin - they are diluted with organic solvents, and then impregnated with wood. As a result, the material can withstand pests and gains strength.
The holes made by insects are covered with putty, which is obtained by mixing 0.2 parts of gypsum, 1 share of rosin, 2 shares of beeswax with the addition of the required dose of a suitable pigment color. The putty is diluted in turpentine or melted, after which the defects are carefully repaired and the excess removed after drying.Not all antiques need serious restoration. Most often, it is only necessary to eliminate minor defects or fit furniture into a new interior.
Partial item update
Restoring old furniture often consists in repairing the damaged part, for example, if the lacquer coating has worn out. It is necessary to remove the layer of old varnish, first you need to degrease the surface, then remove the varnish with a metal sponge. Then wipe the products well with a rag and varnish again.
Film restoration
This is the easiest way, which is used when there is not enough time for painstaking work. The scheme here consists of only three steps:
- remove paint or varnish from the surface;
- remove fat from it;
- Stick on the pre-purchased film.
Lamination
Lamination is a common way to restore antique furniture. It consists in removing the worn coating and applying a new varnish. Furniture is disassembled into individual elements, contaminated paint and varnish are removed. After that, the broken parts of the structure are replaced, chips and scratches are closed. If the furniture elements have significant damage, they must be further strengthened, and only then can the product be assembled. At the end of the assembly, the furniture is varnished.
Dyeing
If the product has pens, patch elements, and so on, they must be removed in advance. Shelves and drawers are removed from the cabinet, mirrors and handles are removed, then it is installed on the bars to raise the bottom of the product. The surface is cleaned, dust is removed and treated with turpentine, after which the cabinet is primed with an oil composition. After drying, the surface is treated with sandpaper and wiped with a cloth with turpentine. Before application, the paint is diluted to a liquid consistency, so it will better cover the surface.
Wood defects
The bulk of the discovered material shortcomings is easy to eliminate:
- small cracks are filled with colored wax;
- potholes and chips are covered with liquid wood;
- traces of the vital activity of insects and rot are cleaned with a chisel, impregnated with biocide compounds and masked by a liquid tree.
Steaming wood is necessary to heat the material and make it softer, in this case grout can penetrate into its structure. It can be hoped that, after steaming, small cracks will converge and become invisible. For steaming, it is best to use a household steam generator.
You can use a kettle with a tight-fitting lid for steaming. A little water is poured, a heat-resistant hose is put on the nozzle. After steaming, this place of furniture is dried with a hairdryer and the heated wood is immediately rubbed with wax.
Assembly
Assembling restored furniture will not create difficulties, especially if you took all the parts in their original form before starting work. There are only a few recommendations:
- keep the old furniture fasteners intact;
- use black screws instead of screws, they are better held in wood without the use of glue;
- don’t worry if the furniture with new upholstery is tightly folded or unfolded, after a short time the parts will be burned in.
Common mistakes
There are a number of mistakes that are most often made during the restoration of furniture with your own hands:
- the most important commandment is not to harm furniture and make your work as inconspicuous as possible;
- try to replace fewer furniture parts, if this is not possible, then make duplicates of the same quality material;
- if necessary, renew the veneer coating, try to remove the veneer from subtle areas of restored furniture;
- if we are restoring upholstered furniture, you should try to keep the original coating on the product.
Before starting work, it is advisable to view a master class on how to restore various pieces of furniture.
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