Carpenter or Handyman Who Can Repair Antique Oak Dining Room Chairs?
We have six 80-year-old oak chairs in need of structural reinforcements and minor repairs. Can anyone recommend a reliable person who does excelent work? These were my grandmother’s and I wish to preserve them. Thanks, Shannon
sb10847
in Wood Restoration 12 years and 8 months ago
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6 replies
AnnieJ | 12 years and 7 months ago
Try calling Artistic Woodcrafts — excellent craftsmen who do mainly brownstorne resoration — but I know they do furniture as well. 646-541-3409. I have used them and highly recommend them for anything wood.
NeoGrec | 12 years and 7 months ago
Norm Benjamin, Boerum Hill Restoration, 375 Atlantic Ave is your man. (718) 243-1972\. He can fix any chair. Depends how much you’re prepared to pay of course but he’ll give you an accurate estimate if you take him your worst example.
brucef | 12 years and 7 months ago
We own (6) oak chairs that originally came out of the old library at Brooklyn College. They periodically loosened over the years and I both fixed them myself, and had professional do it. Yet they loosened again. Finally I had a local carpenter (in So Jersey) fix them. He worked at a wooden boat manufacturer at one time, and since then they haven’t loosened. He reassembled, clamped, and used dowels into the joints, rather than screws or metal fasteners. That was some years ago and voila.
466dad | 12 years and 8 months ago
I had Das Upholstery do some structural repair on an antique table while he was doing some upholstery. Nothing to complicated – just some glue joints that had come undone, but he did a nice job. He’s on Cortelyou, but will pickup for a little extra.
brokelin | 12 years and 8 months ago
You can find sets of oak chairs online sold by antique stores all over the country to gauge how much replacing them would cost. Also, the poly was used all over both pieces, not just on the top surfaces to provide for the greater use on the tops.
brokelin | 12 years and 8 months ago
I also got a dining room set passed down. While I had the buffet and table refinished, I was told by restorers that the structural reinforcements necessary to make the chairs usable would mean entirely rebuilding the chairs, and would not be worth it economically. They were really just too shot from 100 years of daily use. (And I paid an arm and a leg to have the table and buffet refinished, so I wasn’t trying to be cheap here.) Mine were the standard oak turn of the last century chairs you see all over, often called T-back chairs. Yours may be something sturdier, or less damaged. Just writing this note to tell you to be ready to maybe hear that, or, alternatively, to find out how much they will charge in detail, and ask how sturdy they will be after fixing. I picked up some similar antique chairs at a different antique shop on Atlantic Ave, already refinished, that I like even better, as they are a little more curved and not quite so severe in style, and they were either sturdier to begin with, or less used (in a formal dining room perhaps, not used daily). They came with the seats nicely padded with thicker padding (thicker than they may have had originally), all ready for me to staple gun on the fabric of my choice (stretching it tight is a real pain, took hours; others may prefer to pay someone to do this work.) I I am glad that I was discouraged from redoing the original chairs – I am convinced they would not have been sturdy enough after restoration, even before considering the other arm and leg it would have cost me. I wanted to refinish and repair the chairs handed down from my relative, but I am glad the restorers I talked to were honest with me about the prospect of actually restoring them. Chair legs can take a beating over time. Some can be taken apart and reglued – even when possible, it is a labor-intensive and expensive process. Pieces of the wood leg and supports between legs on mine had previously broken and been put together with metal L-brackets, this is why they were too far gone to be worth fixing; if the wood pieces are themselves sturdy, and mostly what is needed is taking apart the structure and regluing them together, they are more easily fixed. Another note: if you are going for refinishing, think about specifying the actual finish process very precisely. I went with a restorer a decade ago who had an antique store on Atlantic Ave. and a workshop nearby where he did the work (somewhere over by Nevins, not accessible from the street.) The antiques in his store were finished beautifully. He did a gorgeous job on my pieces, and the stain color was what I wanted (I didn’t leave that to chance, but brought him a shelf from another piece of furniture I had and said I wanted basically that color stain). But when he delivered the pieces, they were shiny – he had put shiny polyurethane on top of the beautiful refinish job. He told me had to do this, as they didn’t stand up to family use. As a one-person household, I didn’t anticipate ruining a wood dining room table with use. None of my other nice wood furniture (reproduction or and antiques) had a poly finish – it never occurred to me that an antiques restorer would finish with poly, not your typical fine furniture coating. I learned a lesson there – be even more specific than I already am. I like the refinishing work and color, but I still hate the shiny poly he used. Someday, will have that fixed. Don’t have his card anymore – business was called Antique Restoration, I believe (I know, not so distinctive a name), guy had a middle-eastern first name, shop was on Atlantic (haven’t checked lately to see if it is still there, but so many aren’t), his restoration business may still be ongoing.