Product Details
Furniture Restoration: Step-by-Step Tips and Techniques for Professional Results

Furniture Restoration: Step-by-Step Tips and Techniques for Professional Results
By Ina Brosseau Marx, Allen Marx

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Product Description

Who doesn’t love to watch Antiques Roadshow? And who doesn’t secretly suspect that Mom’s sewing cabinet, that great thrift-store table, or Grandpa’s rocking chair could someday be the star of the show? If only the cabinet door hung straight…if only the table weren’t all scratched up…if only the chair still rocked. Now it’s easy to get those pieces ready for their close-up! Furniture Restoration makes it simple to assess and repair favorite pieces, whether they’re family heirlooms or flea-market finds. Authors Ina Brosseau Marx and Allen Marx share more than thirty years of experience in all kinds of antique furniture restoration. The first chapter gives readers an overview of restoration and explains exactly how to tell when a piece is valuable enough to use a professional restorer. The rest of the book guides the reader through furniture restoration and repairs of every kind, looking at common problems on different pieces and some quick fixes as well as the properties of wood, repairing joinery, restoring surfaces, making molds and casts, restoring color, repairing veneers, finishes, and ornamented surfaces, and much, much more. More than 600 full-color photos and dozens of before-and-afters let readers see exactly how to fix whatever is wrong without going wrong themselves.

Product Details

  • Amazon Sales Rank: #258684 in Books
  • Published on: 2007-08-07
  • Released on: 2007-08-07
  • Original language: English
  • Number of items: 1
  • Binding: Hardcover
  • 272 pages

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist
Contemplating a career in furniture restoration? The Marxes' extraordinarily detailed instructions will either excite readers or completely turn them off. No question, restoration is a skill few learn easily; the required time and patience appeal to those completely enamored of fixing, repairing, and conserving antiques. In numerous sidebars, the authors define such terms as verdigris and gesso or help you to compile a specific tool kit to solve particular damage issues, whether veneer repair or original color detection. Pictures are lavish, illustrating many "befores" as well as "afters." The instructions, although easy to follow, require major competencies and clear understanding of different furniture styles and periods. It is, in short, a book to be pored over again and again, the ultimate test in re-realizing a thing of beauty. Jacobs, Barbara

About the Author

Ina Brosseau Marx and Allen Marx restore, consult, and curate for such museums as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Yale University’s Garvan Collection, the New-York Historical Society, and many collectors and institutions. In 1983, the Marxes founded The Finishing School, which offers in-depth instruction in creating painted finishes, and their book, Professional Painted Finishes, has sold more than TK,000 copies. They live in Princeton, NJ.

Customer Reviews

a well-illustrated, comprehensive guide to furniture design5
this lovely book is filled with incredible examples of fine furniture, as well as step by step instructions, with specific tools and materials for restoring, rehabilitating, or recreating the pieces.
a wide variety of styles and techniques are presented here, and these are applicable not just to furniture but to panels, walls, and other substrates. an inspiring, must-have book for the decorative artist!

Very useful book5
This is one of the best book on antique furniture restoration. It covers the major problems that one encounters with older furniture and offers practical approaches to solve them. The sections on color matching are better than I have seen elsewhere. I am a beginner, so I am not just attempting the easy stuff. Detailed chapters on gilding, etc. will be of interest to more advanced refinishers. Lots of very clear pictures. Beautifully printed too. Five stars.

Starting Point4
I gave this book only four stars so prespective buyers will not think this book, in itself, will be means to becoming a furniture restorer. Rather, this book will give someone a starting point so they can know what direction to proceed. There is not enough information on any of the techniques in the book to enable an initiate to perform credible restorations or to master any specific technique itself.
That said, one piece of cardinal advice I would give. Never practice on the object you are trying to restore.
Finally, a library of books, advice and instruction from someone in the craft, and experience, all beyond the scope of this book, are the requirements to become adept at furniture restoration. Also, the beginning of the book states, " to be a restorer, it isn't necessary to be a cabinetmaker." That's true, but it sure helps.
After all that I recommend this book to anyone interested in restoration as an excellent beginning.