There's A Reason We Took This Furniture Piece On

We have a very special delivery today at Montford Boulevard. We're always looking for Art Deco furniture around the country. We found this one in New Jersey. We live in Georgia and we had it hand delivered. If you've been watching our channel this may look kind of familiar. We recently worked on a bedroom suite and we believe this is part of it. This isn't too bad, the damage, the stains on here. We'll definitely refinish it. The right side has a bit more damage. Makes sense when you realize that there's only one lefty for every nine righties in the world. We believe this was made in the 1940s. Again if you look at this shoe it may look familiar. We will recap toward the end of this video and show the suite that we were working on before. We believe this was made right in between the Art Deco and mid-century modern movements. You can see the dovetail joints, mahogany bottoms in the drawers. This is quality wood. Got a significant break on the upper right corner of that drawer. You'll notice there are no handles. Somebody probably was grabbing at the side of the drawer to open it. There is a groove underneath each drawer. If anybody knows what this code indicates please let us know. Looks like the inspector stamped the back of it right below where the mirror was. But let's get this in the shop and see what we can do. Welcome back to Montford Boulevard and welcome to the world of Art Deco furniture. We're going to hop right in here. There was no mirror when we purchased this. Who knows when it was lost. But look at these oval head screws. They can cost up to a dollar a piece if you're going to buy them so we'll hold on to those. Fortunately this centerpiece is not attached. Just the nails are holding it in place. Sometimes those will go all the way across. That can be really difficult. We are going to separate this. We're going to make a set of nightstands. This was really kind of holding on. Sometimes they'll use long nails. Got it to let go. A little dangerous with all those nails. This is kind of a hassle. If you look at that upper row they are aligned with the drawer bottom. So you can't really get at the heads of the nails. You have to bend and break them off. We didn't record that but we're going to fill those gaps now. Looking at the back where the mirror used to go we've got this awkward diagonal cut. Our idea is to cut this off at a right angle. Chisel it rather. That should make it easier to bridge the gap. This is a leftover piece from the middle. It'll really help with the veneer. Fairly close match. We zip that off on the table saw. There you go. Notice the groove here in the side. Use the band saw to cut another piece of that center section. That should work when we put the backer board back in there. Before we get into sanding we've got one more significant repair. That's damage that could be repeated again so we want to add a little bit of extra reinforcement. Three nails should do it before we add the Bondo wood filler. It took several passes with the Bondo. That does dry harder than wood. Get that nice and sharp. Should be good to go. We always look forward to sanding to seeing what's underneath. We'll go after some of these significant repairs first. Our initial plan was to do kind of an advanced touch-up on the sides. That's significant damage but we were going to use the lacquer powders. See if we could overcome that damage. However, as we were sanding we were seeing these darker spots. Couldn't really get them to go away. Turns out this is unfortunately a cheaper veneer. It's lighter and as you sand beneath the lighter coat is this darker section. You can see that drink ring wouldn't go away either. We're doing a test with naphtha here. It's kind of a preview if you were to stain it and you can see this just isn't really good looking veneer. Kind of a disappointment. The sides were almost saveable but almost isn't really good enough with what we're doing. So we are going to re-veneer these entire pieces. We like this peel and stick oak veneer with 3m adhesive. This has been a really good product for us. You do want to make sure there aren't any bubbles. Top is looking pretty fresh as well. We've got the tops of these nightstands masked now and it's time to add some black paint. We'll actually be checking out a new tool today. It's this HVLP paint sprayer. It's cordless which is super convenient. This comes with a 47 ounce paint container. We really like this detachable LED light. This is a tool that came with it. It's for checking the thickness of your paint. You check it with a timer. We found out we needed to add a little bit of water to thin this paint out before we sprayed. So quick and easy though. This tool is much more powerful than we need but handy for this job. We have a discount code and a product link below but we're happy to have this new tool in our kit. We've got the fronts of the drawers re-veneered as well. It's kind of fun to see them so fresh. This vanity had such a clean look to it and this kind of goes with that MCM Art Deco geometric style. This is brown mahogany oil stain. We're actually going to come back with a second color once this dries. Looking really nice on one of those wider drawers. Every once in a while you realize how much masking you can go through. We had added some more black but look at how sharp that's looking. Again this may start to look familiar if you recall some recent dressers that we have worked on. Starting with that same brown mahogany on the base. The veneer on the shoe is the only original veneer to this piece that was savable. Really nice to see some color on these sides. That white oak grain coming through. Look who it is. Frances, our favorite bulldog. She tried to charge and lick the camera again. She tries to lick the camera, yeah. I accidentally knocked over a drawer and scared Frances today. Always happy to see our friend Frances. So this is the second color. This is golden oak. It's adding more of a brown tone. Kind of evens out that orange. Gives it just a richer look. It was kind of a lot of work to add the new veneer but in the end we were very glad because this set has such a fresh look that really goes with that MCM Art Deco design. Spraying satin lacquer here making that grain pop even more. You can see we've book matched these bottom drawers especially you can tell. These are the handles we're going with. You may have seen these before. These are modern handles but they're very much in line with the style of Donald Deskey. He frequently used black lacquer in the 1930s which was really groundbreaking at the time. They rock a little bit of course so we will have to deal with that. We've made a curve for what needs to be removed. That's about it. We don't really have the gear for this so we're just using our belt sander. Gets the job done though. Just one more pass. That should do it. Kind of a lot going on today. Both the window washers and the landscapers are here. Lots of noise but probably a good time to finally wash this set. Normally we'll do this earlier on but before we button this back up and close the backs on these it'll be a good time to scrub these. We washed the undersides looking at these slotted screws. Just a picture of when this was made. We were thinking 1940s but 1930s is a possibility. I'm going to add these nylon glides. We chose a darker color just to make them disappear a little bit. So here's the original backer board with that diagonal cut to accommodate the mirror but we made those repairs. So if you flip that upside down it actually coincides with that support at the bottom. So the diagonal cut kind of disappears. We do like to keep the backs on our pieces rustic. This is how they were made and so we prefer that rough look to kind of show the history. Look at the shellac bringing that mahogany in the bottoms back to life. So this is stainless steel. This is going to be a backer plate behind each handle. We've got the miter box. We will cut one for each drawer front. See how fresh and clean that looks. The edge is a little rough however and we will grind that off. Drilling through stainless steel can be challenging. You want to make sure you have a good set of drill bits. Fortunately it's very easy to bend though so we can form fit this curve no problem. Next we're going to mark where the holes should be drilled. The stainless steel plate is going to be centered but these black handles are going to be offset just a bit. Again this is mimicking Donald Desky's style. This kind of goes with that clean MCM look but makes it a little bit more convenient as well with these handles. We have a policy. We don't stop working on these pieces until we love them. And you know what? I think we're there. Here is a look at the matching low profile dresser from the same bedroom suite. A little bit of mid-century modern. A little bit of art deco. This also had a tall boy dresser that we were finished at the same time. These both sold very quickly so when we spotted this vanity we hopped right on it. Stepping back to look at the finished nightstand set. Again we were disappointed at first with the veneer but adding the fresh oak and we are so happy with the results. It really helps to give the beautiful original design of this piece the dignity it deserves. One more look at the beginning. It had a lot of potential on its own with the black lacquer accents and the fresh handles. This set should be ready for generations to come. Thank you so much for watching until the end. Check the links below for a discount on a quality HVLP paint sprayer. We'll be back again soon with another art deco furniture project but you're welcome back here at Montford Boulevard anytime.