Orange is so very dated for todays styles. Although this buffet is absolutely stunning exactly how it is it won’t exactly fit in todays interior designs. This antique buffet cabinet refinishing was quite a project but turned out amazing. This piece has some amazing book end veneer work on the top drawers and doors so when my client said they wanted to keep it wood and not painted I breathed a long sigh of relief!
One of my most common comment to my clients who are debating whether to paint or stain is “Wood is classic and will never go out of style”. Even if the color tones are not quite in style now wood is still classic. Grey, black and raw wood is very popular right now and to be honest I am loving it. Each one provides a slight color challenge for me and I alway love a challenge.
The Refinishing Video
Of course this needed to be brought back down to the raw wood, good thing because the previous owner decided on what I believe to be a marine varnish. Although marine varnish its great for boats its not always great for furniture. Once I had this antique buffet cabinet stripped I still needed a lot of sanding. I love my Festool sander with Uneeda sponge sanding pads for all the curves and carvings.
After sanding the antique buffet cabinet I tried using General Finishes Graphite stain and if you saw in the video it was gross on the craved wood. It looked straight up blue, ick! I always seem to try their grey stains and end up cleaning it off and going for a different color. I understand why they use blue but its too much blue. The blue is because so much wood is orange, however lately it never seems to work for me the way I am guessing they intended it too.
My favorite colors to get a good grey has been General Finishes black or walnut (water base stains). Walnut has more green in it which always seems to create a great balance of color tones.
I did do some toning after staining. I used a walnut and black stain mixed with my clear top coat to tone the edges of the buffet.
Finished off with a 50/50 mix of stain and flat top coat. Cleaned the hardware to shine them up a little bit. Then did my final inspection had to adjust the doors and drawer a tad to avoid them from sticking.
This was quite the project but well worth the elbow grease to get her to fit in with todays designs.
Thanks for reading
Tara Lou
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