In late July of 2003, I was commissioned to refinish and repair an antique oak wardrobe. When the client delivered it to my shop it was knocked down into the various subassemblies. They consisted of the base with two drawers, two cabinet cases with doors attached, a center frame and panel assembly, and a cornice unit. This wardrobe was built by a company that's no longer in existence in Cardiff, which is the capitol of Wales in the UK.

The wardrobe was in rough shape and had a much darker finish than my client liked. His instructions were to lighten the finish and repair what I could.

There were a number of problems that needed repair, which included the pulls on the doors and drawers that needed to be replaced, splits in both wood panels on both doors, some of the door hinges were either missing or broken, one drawer was missing a brass escutcheon and had a split in one corner of a side, the base was missing a piece of one end panel and the panel on the other end was split in several places, the cornice unit had gaps in both miter joints and nail heads that had popped out, the cabinet cases were missing a number of wooden cleats that served to position them with the base and the cornice unit, one case had a split frame member on the interior, both cases wobbled and needed to be tightened, there were scratches and what appeared to be paint marks inside of both cases, and the client didn't like the panel in the center panel assembly and wanted something made to replace it.

As far as the finish was concerned, it had to be stripped. This was one of the most challenging refinishing and repair projects I've encountered so far. Fortunately for me, my client was very easy to work with and left many of the decisions to my discretion. 

Follow along by checking out the links below to see this project from beginning to end. I think the end results were stunning and there's no doubt my client was very pleased once he saw it finished.