Posted 4 years ago
ChaseCan
(35 items)
These are the original hardwood cabinets in a friend's house that was built in 1954. They may not be the fanciest, but I can attest, they sure beat the press board cabinets of today. They are made of solid hard wood with hardwood laminated tops and bottoms.
I was asked to refinish them but was soon to discover there was major water damage which caused some serious delamination and damage to the both the upper and lower cabinets. A fairly straight forward refinishing turned into a 3 month long restoration. Any wood that was delaminated I injected glue in-between the layers and relaminated it. The finish is a 4 coats of exterior grade oil based spar urethane including seal coat inside and out.
All hardware was removed, boiled, repaired where needed, and hand scrubbed before repainting with Satin Black. Only one hinge isn't original...
All drawer were pulled and refurbished as well. And these are all wood runners There's no metal drawer guides. Once refurbished, I simply waxed 'em up and they glide real nice now.
New LED under cabinet lighting was added.
I've built cabinets as a teen but never attempted restoring anything this extensively damaged or this large of a project before. They really came out great.
I found it really interesting how they were built. And something I had never seen before was found in the tall pantry on the side. It was a elongated hole in the shelf that separates the upper from lower side. I'm just guessing but I think it was to allow brooms and mop handles through the hole and act to hold them in place. I came up with a custom removable drop in to fill the hole so the shelf could be used in full while not ruining the original design of the cabinet. A simple finger hole added makes it easily converted back to original. It was really neat to see how things were built in the 50's.
They have lasted almost 70 years to this point. I can well image after the work I put into them, they'll last another 70+ years.
If interested you can see more photos and read what went into the cabinet restoration process as well as some other projects I did on my blog by following the below link:
https://ccanade.blogspot.com/2019/12/just-in-time-for-christmas.html
ChaseCan, So beautiful. <3
Thank you Keramikos. :-)
You did a great job - and yes it is interesting to see how things were done before, and how they were done to last the years.
Looks great. I'm going to tackle my kitchen remodel this summer.