Once you have made the decision to refinish an older or antique piece of furniture, naturally the next thought is the schedule of events that happen between now and the final coat of finish.

Very often in the course of restoring a piece of antique furniture it is necessary to fill a nail hole, plug a crack, fill a divot or even replace a missing area of trim. For this purpose there is a variety of generically called “wood putty” or “wood dough” products available...

When you embark on any project involving older or antique furniture, whether it’s just a simple repair, minor adjustments or a major recondition or refinish, your recipe will call for three main ingredients, the three “Ps” of successful work: product, patience and pride.

The best advice you can receive about bleaching wood is to avoid it if at all possible. Of all the things that are done to wood furniture by amateurs and professionals alike, bleaching is probably the most dangerous to you personally and potentially the most harmful to the wood.

Any time you strip and refinish a piece of wood furniture, somewhere down the line you probably will need to fill a nail hole, patch a crack or fix a piece of trim.

Well, you bought it, got it home, lubed the drawers, leveled the doors and it looks great, doesn’t it?

After taking care of the worn out runners on the bottoms of the drawers as discussed last week, attention must now be paid to the other half of the problem – the inside runners in the case itself.

Q Can you tell me what Regency furniture is? What period is it from and what country? I have seen lots of pictures of antiques that say “Regency” but often they don’t seem to have anything in common and are very hard to identify. Help.

When dealing with this period of case goods such as Empire, Late Classicism and early Victorian, often it is not enough to refinish or recondition the case and service the hardware.

Most of us who are interested in antique furniture have, at one time or another, run across what seemed liked an intractable problem at the time — the locks on an antique chest or desk.