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grandmas buffet

well, sometime you have to do a project youve been promising to do for a long time but have been putting off. I am not the biggest fan of repair / restoration work. The few projects I have done have always ended up with me almost completely tearing apart some piece of furniture, figuring out joinery and methods of work that arent my own, and generally making a meal out of what initially looks like a snack.

My wife was given an antique buffet by her parents, it belonged to her fathers mother, supposedly was her "pride and joy" and I can see why, it is a neat piece of furniture. it has also suffered greatly for many years, it was not in great shape when we got it and two moves have . . . how do I say this delicately . . . pounded the ever-loving hell out of it . . . well its finally time to fix the piece or get rid of it.

By the time I took the pics I had already removed the mirror, thus the peek a boo to the tool bench in the back, The biggest things wrong are the bottom drawer does not open, the builder created this huge bottom drawer and added no center support for its weight. The bottom of the drawer has also been replaced with old wall paneling once upon a time. I will have to fix this as well, the legs on the right hand side are separating front to back and the thin plywood bottom that was the cupboard base behind the two doors is warped and popped and dropped into the bottom drawer as well...

Today I spent the time taking the thing apart, It came apart pretty easy actually, not many splintered pieces, I found one of the problems in the construction was the use of small scab pieces glued and nailed in place as supports on the inside, well hopefully tomorrowI will have the opportunity to begin to put a few things back together and engineer some supporting cleats to help shore up the thin wood shelf that I have to replace

cheers all and goodnight

Oldwolf