You finally found that piece of vintage furniture that would look great in your house or apartment. There are some things that you need to remember before you refinish the piece.
The first thing to remember is that you could be messing with the value of the piece. With antique furniture (like items in the Chippendale era for example), there is a sizable chunk of the value of the piece invested in the original finish. I’ve seen the value drop up to 50% when the piece of furniture was refinished. A good rule of thumb on valuable pieces of furniture is to refrain from doing anything major yourself (dusting it off is more often the way to go).
The second thing to remember is how much it will cost to refinish and repair the piece. I have seen furniture at auctions, flea markets and estate sales that need a good amount of repair work to go along with the refinishing. Replacing legs, chair seats or even table tops could drive up the cost quite a bit.
The last thing to remember is how much time it will take to do the refinishing. Over the years, I have seen a refinishing project take up to a week because of the number of steps in the process. If you don’t have much time to begin with, you may want to stick with just stripping the old finish off and putting on some new stain.
What types of furniture have you refinished?
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