Question about furniture restoration

thenanny2die4

Do we have any experts here?

A year or so ago we bought an aging chest of drawers via eBay. It's a lovely piece of furniture; a bit battered, but that just adds to its character. I prefer this to perfect, brand new stuff.

Problem is, the top surface has gone all odd! I don't know what it's coated with - lacquer, varnish (?) but whatever it is has started to lift in patches. Clearly I'm going to have to sort this out but I have no idea how to tackle it. It's dark wood (don't know what, sorry) and I love the dark look so really don't want to sand all the "age" out of it if there's an alternative and it's not worth spending a fortune on a French Polisher (assuming that would be an answer). The "lacquer" can now just be largely peeled off.

What can I do please?

ormus

all depends on how much its worth?
french polishing is very expensive. not worth it on everyday common or garden pieces.
DIY method is to strip it all off, and then stain/varnish to match. takes a bit of time/skill to get a good match though.

Steve_Groves

It's hard to tell without seeing the top but if the top coat is lifting off in sheets then the chances are that you have two finishes there, they are incompatible and have not bonded together. My guess would be that before you bought it on EBAY, the previous owner varnished all over it to give it a bit of a make over.

I would take your time to remove all of the loose top coating by getting a fine craft knife blade under it and lifting it. Best guess would be that the initial finish was wax or oil so just rub some wax back on. The benefit of the wax will be that any more flaking can be lifted exactly the same and some more wax put on.

HTH

thenanny2die4

Thanks to both of you for your replies.

Steve, that's exactly what my OH said; that the eBay seller had whacked something on the top to smarten it up a bit. I think I'll take your advice here and just remove the top surface as gently as I can and give it a good wax, then repeated polishing, over time, should even out any patchiness.

Thanks for this. :beer: