MakeMePrettyAgain: Stickley End Table

Wednesday, January 30, 2013

Stickley End Table

I found this darling (well, it is now!) side table from some guy that was clearing out

his mothers house. It was trashed. Didn't find out until I got it home and did

some research that it was a Stickley piece.

Fifteen dollah make you holla!! LOL

I had already started when I remembered I hadn't snapped a before photo!

Solid mahogany with this cool design inlay. As you can see, it was quite damaged. These pieces can actually be worth quite a bit in a pristine state. However, pristine was 3 decades ago with this piece. It was too far gone. But I did save the solid wood top. It finished up beautifully.

I'm still soaking the hardware. I'm doing the patina soak. Cider vinegar and sea salt.

Hoping to get some of the verdigris look.

So first off, since this is mahogany and we know how this bleeds, I painted it with a wood sealer. You must start using this! Plus, it protects the wood. So, if in the future anyone wants to take off the paint and attempt to restore the wood, they can. With this stuff, you don't have to sand the crap out of the wood and damage any intricate areas (like the legs) in order to get the paint off. It's quick, easy and dries fast. Sometimes you can use a white primer but sometimes you don't want the white primer to show when you are distressing.

Use the seal coat.

The base coat was Provence with a tad of Florence.

(I also did some highlights with just Florence)

I did my own white with a tablespoon of French Linen. Sand, sand sand!

I love how the wood just pops with this color.

I sanded in both directions. It gives that criss-cross appearance in the finish. I was able to let some of the inlay peek through. The wood was finished with an acrylic satin top coat and the painted areas got a mixture of both dark and neutral waxes.

My cat matches!

How you sand and how much you sand is completely an individual thing. The problem I run
into is when to stop! Even if I'm happy with it, I'll say, "oh, just a bit more!" I literally have to
force myself to put everything down and "Step Away from the Furniture!!"

So here is the lion head hardware after I did a treatment on it to add patina. It's apple cider
vinegar and sea salt. I soaked it but nothing happened. But, the spots exposed to air turned this gorgeous blue-green! So I soaked it and then let it sit overnight in a plastic tub after draining the liquid. Cool huh??!! But it will rub off so make sure to spray with a sealer.