A Vase Stand

     When we go to the fair I love to go to the building where they show the kid's 4-H projects.   It amazes me how talented the kids are now days and how well some of those projects are put together.   I'm especially looking for those projects where someone has taken some old piece of furniture and refinished it.    (For me, refinishing furniture is in that same category as painting or maybe even sanding - dull.)    When I look at those projects I have to wonder why I can not seem to master the refinishing process as well as some of the youth do.  (I'm jealous.)   We have a couple of pieces handed down from our parents that I could work on, but I keep hiding them in the downstairs bedroom.   (I'm still hoping for that day when they come out with a spray can of stuff that you just blast on your heirloom and "poof",    your old antique looks like it has been refinished to something new.)  

  This week I was asked by my niece, Erin, if I could take a look at a stand that had been given to her from a family friend who had recently passed away.      The stand was pretty wobbly and the finish had some water marks on it.   It would be a small project to work on and a chance for me to put my refinishing skills to work. (What refinishing skills?)     I'm not sure if I did things the right way or not, but the first thing I did was to dismantle the stand and to apply a stripper to all pieces to remove the varnish.     Most strippers will remove the varnish but will have little effect on the stain.  

        Once I had all the varnish off, I sanded most of the old stain away.    I did this because the water marks blemished the original stain.    I would assume that somewhere in the history of this stand it held a live plant and moisture slowly got into the wood.   The wood cleaned up nicely.   In fact I fell in love with the grain pattern as the wood was quarter sawn white oak.    (It is not the kind of wood one would find in my scrap pile.)    Because the stand was a little wobbly, I glued in some dowel pieces into the old screw holes.   When I put the stand back together again, I just re-drilled some new holes.

   I stained the wood with a stain that somewhat matched the previous color.  I put on three coats of varnish on this stand.   I did this before I reassembled the stand which worked good.   The stain and the varnish brought out the grain pattern of this quarter sawn white oak.     When I reassembled the stand, I used some new black screws replacing the old ones.   The old screws were in bad shape.   My co-worker was checking to see if I missed any  spots.

   (I always wonder if I de-valued the antique when I do this kind of stuff.   Ten years from now you will see this stand on the TV show "Antique Road Show".  The appraiser will say that this could have been a $5,000 stand if only someone had not messed with the original stain and kept the old screws.  Hmmm.)

Anyway we delivered it back to it's new home and Erin has some ideas of how she is going to work this into her living room decor.    She sent me this picture of what she has set up so far.   Looks nice.

   Like I said, it was a smaller project, but it kind of got me passed the jitters of refinishing.    I might have to try to do something like this again.