This is a short story about how a little TLC can bring a family piece back to life.

Our client’s depression era nightstand
went though a water event.
While they were away, their ceiling
leaked, which damaged the finish,
detail shown right, and especially
the decal on the top of the cabinet.

Decals were commonly used in the Depression era in order to create lovely working class pieces without spending a lot of money, and they often fared well.
This one had survived beautifully in our client’s family until the water damage.

Pieces of the top lifted leaving
significant chips on the top and along
the sides, above right.  A bag which had
been sitting on top of the cabinet also transferred it’s plastic to the finish,
shown left.

Our goal was to restore it to appearing as a well-appointed
antique, not to make it look new again.

We took a tracing of the decal before cleaning it, just in case some of it lifted.
Even though we are very careful, the water damaged areas of the decal.

We began by cleaning the area around the decal of chalk and debris that came
through the ceiling using distilled water and old soft tea-shirts.
Partly we did this because we wanted to see how
the decal restoration would look; later we cleaned the entire top.

We transferred the tracing onto the clean top; indeed there were significant decal losses.

Acrylic gesso was used to level the areas that were significant infill areas, and then sanded flat to accent the colored paint.

You can paint oil over acrylic, but not acrylic over oil!

Each small surviving decal area
was lightly skip sanded to ensure
the paint would adhere.  The infill
was performed using oil paints;
these were allowed to thoroughly dry.

Unfortunately, painting the decal area
was not photographed; it was simply
too difficult to stop to snap a picture!

The colors were layered over several
days: right, the area after paint,
and before final finish.

The top was chipped and gouged.  We infilled the small losses using a shellac stick.
Some of the larger losses were replaced with veneer (not shown).

The entire damaged top was shellacked with two coats, and again allowed to cure.
The shellac was used as a top coat, but it also secured the decals into place.
Finally, it was waxed.

Below, ready for delivery to serve again as a sweet bedside table.

☾

 dkatiepowell  @  aol.com / mitchellrpowell  @  aol.com
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