Before and After: Furniture Restoration

Last week, we posted about our Reserve collection, which is now housed in a charming barrister bookcase that we had refinished. We had a few other pieces restored at the same time, so I figured that I should write a post about them too!

Chairs Before:

These chairs were at the back of our library before the reno, looking pretty unremarkable.

Chairs After:

Their final destination is unknown, but you can find them now at the front of our space, near the reference desk.

Small Square Table Before:

A few of you may remember this as the small table that used to hold the Library printer, and later (and most importantly) the Library phone charging station.

Small Square Table After:

We had this piece cleaned up, and I have to say I completely love it. I didn’t think much of it before, but it looks really sweet now. As soon as we have some art hanging over it, and maybe a more to-scale plant, I think it could look really cute here at the front of the library.

Our tables are made from ash, and using quarter cuts of wood (which is more wasteful, but gives this beautiful appearance). You can see that below:

Large Work Tables Before:

We have four of these tables (2 longer, 2 shorter), and these probably have had the biggest transformation!

Large Work Tables After:

These beauties were lovingly restored, taking out decades of pen and book scratches, old adhesive velcro strips, and treated with a nice durable top coat. The restorers told me they fixed old repairs that had been made at some point, and cleaned up a significant number of cigarette burns (GASP!). We’re all thrilled with how rich and wonderful these look in the back of the library, especially next to the great purple wall and with these comfortable and stylish new chairs (which also were chosen to actually fit under the skirt on these tables). Our restorers figure our tables to be at least 100 years old – how great do they look?

This isn’t a sponsored post, but since several people have asked, all furniture refinishing was done by AJ Furniture Refinishing here in Ottawa. We’ve been incredibly happy with the results!