27. June 2015 · Comments Off on The Armoire Project – Coming Together · Categories: Domestic
The inside, with shelves and hanging rods reinstallad

The inside, with shelves and hanging rods reinstallad

We are limited in the time that we work on the armoire, currently parked on the back porch, by all the other things that I have to work on – for a retired person and a relatively unemployed person – our days are actually quite full. And also – by the heat and humidity, which certainly does slow down the drying time of wood glue and shellac. We began by disassembling the armoire and stripping out the various interior shelves and brass hardware, in order to facilitate re-gluing, which gave our limited number of clamps into play. We re-glued, nailed and put in new and slightly longer screws along all the angles, and cut small squares of pine to reinforce the bottom corners so that we could put in castors – to make it easier to move the thing. The skirting around the bottom will hide the rollers, once that is reinstalled.

 

The front skirting, repaired, reattached and varnished.

The front skirting, repaired, reattached and varnished.

This morning we got the last castor attached, and the front skirting reattached – this had been broken in two, and had to be re-glued, with a shim across the back. The arched top piece got a bit of light sanding, and then we decided to start with the shellac, which our neighbor the woodworker recommended if we wanted to keep it authentic. (His first suggestion was to slap on a coat of polyurethane and be done with it; he also said that option would basically destroy any antique value.) The sides and the doors are lightly scratched in various places; most of these scratches are in the original finish, and I did have to steel-wool the place where the front skirting had to be joined together – but we were amazed at the improvement that the first coat of shellac made. Many of the scratches and scuff-marks are immediately less visible. We intend to finish the sides and doors with as many thin coats as are required to restore the original appearance, then move it inside and re-attached the doors. I still need to repair and fabricate the side skirting panels, and to repair the top of one of the doors with epoxy putty, but after a week and a half of work on it, we are pretty pleased with how it looks.

The door veneer and detail, after first coat of shellac.

The door veneer and detail, after first coat of shellac.

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