From the Crowe Collection, this piece came to us chemically stripped.  We do not strip furniture, because it shrinks joints.  We prefer to skip sand original paints to raise grain for finish work.

Crowe’s granddaughter gifted it to us, as she was moving out of the country.

BTW, we have many pieces from the Crowe Collection for sale!

The stripping not only left minor cracks, but raised the grain in an unhelpful manner.  We sanded the lifted grain up until it was nearly smooth to facilitate finish work.

It appeared to us that the side table was originally Straw Yellow, which the granddaughter confirmed, as she remembered it from her youth.

The beautiful California tiles are an added bonus and were all intact!

One of the front decorative pieces was missing; Mitchell crafted a replica from Alder.
We secured it and also secured the original so it would not get lost, above.

Finally, Kate painted it in the original color, Straw Yellow, an undercoat of mixed yellow oil paint, top left, with a topcoat of Smokey Maple glaze.

Written by Kate Powell  ©MPF Conservation.
May be printed for your own use ONLY, not for use on blogs without permission.