Renovate - Repair - Restore

In 1985 after I served a 4yr apprenticeship in the art of antique furniture renovation and restoration in a small local firm under the guidance of a master wood sculptor and 2yrs at college taking my City & Guilds in furniture making I set out on my own.

Since then I have undertaken many projects both large and small from making a wooden leg for a labrador dog to the complete renovation of all the interior of an 19th century manor house.

Current projects: Oak floor and Mahogany banisters in a Georgian town house

I was recently asked to make and install some distressed floorboards in English Oak stained and polished to look as if they've been in place for 300yrs and renovate the original Mahogany banister and pitch pine newel posts of a Georgian town house built in 1751.

The floor was relatively easy, random width & length boards tongue and grooved all round, distressed (the fun bit) stained to look old, laid with secret fixings, aged nail holes added to complete the image of centuries of wear with a buffed hand waxed finish.

Images below show the floor in more detail from different angles

Image of hand made and aged floorbaords in English Oak at the bottom of the stairs in a 1750's georgian house with a georgian Mahogany sepentine chest of drawers
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View of the floorboards down the length of the hallway
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Hand made Oak floorboards seen from a different angle
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Hand made Oak floorboards seen from a different angle
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Hand made Oak floorboards seen from a different angle
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View of the hallway Oak floorboards seen from the front door with a 19th century oak settle to the left of the picture
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The banisters were interesting and a different challenge to say the least.

The house was built in 1751 and over the years since styles have changed, the once beautiful rich Mahogany handrail of the staircase banisters had been covered in white gloss paint, which had to be removed before being restored.

However, the person set the task of stripping the handrail and newels did so with a detail sander and paint scraper.

Now, for those who don't know, a detail sander is the ideal tool for getting into hard to sand corners on flat surfaces; they are NOT and I can't emphasise this enough, they are NOT ideal in any way shape or form for removing paint from curved or detailed surfaces, and as for the scraper well..............

Over the house's 270 year existence it had taken on many different guises from family dwelling - school - hotel - airb&b - flats and throughout these changes the orientation of the staircase had changed several times. The last changes and alterations probably in the 1980's had been carried out by someone with dubious skills for the job, together with inferior pine replacement handrail, as became apparent once the paint was stripped away.

This should have been a beautiful mitred joint but instead the 'joiner' used a complicated joint that took a considerble amount of time to make right.
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Neat mitre joints seemed to be a foreign concept, the motto seemed to be "why make a good job when it can be filled and painted"
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Another miss-matched mitre joint, this time mahogany to a pine replacement section
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No thought of chopping in a neat section of matching wood when the good old 2 pack filler was to hand!
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They couldn't be bothered to joint two pieces of the same handrail correctly to make one long piece, again 2 pack filler to the rescue
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Care and attention to detail seem to be a thing of the past. This damage could have been avoided if more care were taken when fixing the spindles
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Judging by the amount of 2 pack filler, it would seem whoever did the alterations had shares in and auto repair shop!

Holes filled and whole sections rebuilt using 2 pack filler
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If the guy doing the stripping had used some kind of liquid stripping agent my life would have been a lot easier. As it was I had to painstakingly remove small bits of paint from intricate moulding.
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A square edged paint scraper is the worst thing to use when stripping paint from curved surfaces particularly if you have know idea what you're doing
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If you must hold a joint solid and in place with a screw at least counter bore the hole to take the screw head, not leave the head proud of the surface so it has to be sanded flush.
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Of all the problems that came to light once the handrail had been stripped the biggest was how to make good the abysmal handrail corner joint on the second landing.

I'm not entirely sure what the joiner was thinking when he made this joint.
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The wood around the joint was too fragile to actually take apart plus there was a large screw holding it onto the newel that the head had been snapped off.
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The only option available to me was to mould and shape what I could, making the handrail resemble something like it should.
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In certain places, particularly where the broken screw was, I had to accept the moulding continuity wasn't going to be perfect.
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Once the horrendous white filler was removed, I used Mahogany cut from spare handrail found in the loft for repairs.
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Once I was satisfied that the reshaping and moulding was as good as I could get in the timeframe available, it was time to start the staining and polishing process.
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Nearly there, the carpets are fitted, the Mahogany handrail and Pitch pine newels are stained to match each other, now begins the polishing and waxing stage. A couple of coats of french polish are applied to seal the timber and hold the stain before sanding back and a coloured wax polish applied. The client wanted a wax finish which they felt would be more in keeping with the age of the property.

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