Antique furniture restoration is often contested for its effects on the furniture itself. However, what if the furniture is suffering from so many scratches and missing pieces? What if an antique chair is missing two legs? Sometimes, antique value aside, antique furniture would look better refinished and repaired.

If you are not amenable to getting your antique furniture professionally refinished, then you can just do it yourself. If you have the basic expertise in carpentry and wood finishing then you can probably pull it off.

Preamble to refinishing

Before you unleash your creative powers over your antique furniture, take note of the following first:

1.    Can the furniture take a certain amount of hammer banging? If you are going to put in new legs on a chair, you might crack fragile furniture.

2.    Is your antique furniture very expensive? If it is, restoration might bring down the value big time. Make sure you do not have any plans of selling the piece anymore.

3.    Is the surface of the furniture sensitive to detergent and other minor cleaning agents? Some furniture has been colored with natural dyes (vegetable oil-based paints).

You might be surprised that some actually come off when in contact with cleaning agents.

Refinishing your furniture

Restoration does not have to be invasive. In fact, antique furniture restoration is all about non-invasive methods. Before you even touch the furniture, you have to determine whether the restoration you are going to do will affect the value of the piece drastically.

If you have a Heian dynasty clothing cabinet, then do not touch the furniture. In fact, the patina should be preserved at all cost. You see what we mean? Sometimes a bit of dusting can take away hundreds of dollars off the value of an antique.

Antique furniture restoration should only be done when you are quite sure that the article will not be sold anymore. If you do sell it after restoration, the selling price will be much lower. Drastic alterations often take away at least a third of the original price.

Minor, non-invasive antique furniture restoration involves cleaning the dirt off the surfaces and replacing broken knobs. Broken parts should be replaced with furniture parts from roughly the same time period.

Care should be taken not to make the alterations obvious. Use glue instead of iron nails when dealing with small holes and gaps on the furniture. As much as possible, do not take apart the furniture and do not alter its basic shape. GP