The Cost of Refinishing Furniture: Are Your Pieces Worth It?
Do you have some wood furniture that needs a fresh look? Maybe you picked up a new piece from a flea market or a garage sale or dug up a family heirloom from the attic, and you aren’t sure whether you should refinish your antique (or not-so-antique) furniture or not. Refinishing can transform a piece and the room it’s in, but it can quickly become a big project and the cost of furniture refinishing can be a problem.
If you’re trying to decide if professional furniture refinishing prices are worth the time and effort, here are our tips for how to identify if your wooden furniture pieces are worth it:
Construction
Furniture built before 1950 is higher quality than pieces built more recently. Mass-produced furniture built in the last 50 or so years, from 1960 onward, commonly has particleboard, laminate surface, and is built more cheaply. You don’t need to have antique value to make refinishing worth it. A vintage item several decades old is likely antique furniture that you should seek out furniture refinishing services for.
You should also be careful with extremely old antiques, especially those older than 1850, because refinishing can damage their value. Antique furniture experts such as the ones at Aaron’s Touch Up can offer furniture refinishing tips to help you determine whether your furniture is too valuable to refinish.
Paint or Excessive Finish
Furniture is often painted to hide imperfections, water stains, burns, and other damage. While Aaron’s Touch Up can fix a lot of damage, beware of heavily painted wooden furniture. You can always strip old finish to see what’s underneath, but removing old paint takes more time to remove and likely requires an expert touch. If it’s not valuable or sentimental piece of furniture, you’ll want to take the cost of refinishing into account when considering your best solution.
What Does the Wood Look Like Underneath?
After the wood has been left alone for decades, it can be difficult to know what it will look like underneath. Aaron’s Touch Up can offer furniture refinishing tips and help for determining what the wood will look like. By removing varnish from a protected spot where the original wood is visible, such as the back of a solid-wood drawer front or the backside of a dining room table, we can get a better idea of what lies underneath.
Common types of wood include walnut, cherry, pine, mahogany, oak, and maple. Walnut has a rich grain that gets lighter as it ages, cherry can be stained a variety of colors but can be very dark when stripped, and pine can be much darker when stripped. Older mahogany is very reddish and doesn’t take well to many stains; oak is almost golden in color and maple can be yellowish when refinished.
If you’re not sure if you should refinish your antique or modern furniture or not, consult with the furniture experts at Aaron’s Touch Up to. Contact us to learn more about our furniture refinishing services, and we’ll help you bring your wooden pieces back to life and serve your family for future generations.