American of Martinsville 9-drawer dresser

I'm back!  I finally had some free time to work on furniture.  It felt really good to get back into this.  The time away made me realize just how much I do enjoy doing these restorations.  I still get excited to put on that first coat of finish and watch the beautiful materials jump to life.

This is a walnut 9-drawer dresser by American of Martinsville.  Its design has been attributed to George Nelson although I haven't found direct evidence of that.  Regardless it is a nicely designed piece that has stood the test of time and still looks classy today.  I did change up the design just a bit on this one.  Originally the inset panels on the doors were showing a painted black surface with a gold pinstripe around the edge.  It was giving the piece a dated design that I wasn't a huge fan of.  However the inside surface of those panels were walnut, which I am a fan of.  I was able to take the panels out and turn the inside surface to the outside.  Now the look is much less dated.  This piece also has stylish offset polished aluminum pulls.  I think this is why it is attributed to George Nelson, although other designers like Robsjohn-Gibbings have used this as well.  The drawers also have a cool veneer lay-up with horizontal plain sawn walnut inset in vertically oriented rift sawn walnut.  The door frames are all of solid walnut.  All the drawers function well and the case and legs are structurally sound. 

Dimensions are:  70"W x 31"H x 19"D

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Lane Cubist bedroom set

A quick google search for "Lane Cubist furniture" will give you an idea of how coveted these are.  These pieces are now nearly flawless and don't have the dark brown "wormwood" finish anymore.  Lane always used beautiful veneers and these are no exception.  

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Home Remodeling Projects are like Dominos

Once you start one, they all start tumbling.  My last post was 2 months ago.  I had finished the bathroom except the door trim leading to the bedroom.  Finishing the door and door trim meant moving forward on some of the remodeling plans for the bedroom.  I know this blog is really about furniture but thought I'd share because the bedroom remodel included some interesting wood finishing details.  I've been kinda obsessed by some of the new flooring finishes that utilize a fumed process to turn the wood a gray then oiled to highlight the grain.  I've been looking for a furniture piece I could try this out on.  However, in meantime I was able to test it out on some white oak wood flooring that I used to "panel" the walls.  It came out pretty cool!  The color is a nice calming mix of grays and browns and the grain is subtly enhanced with a white tinted oil.   I also had to build and hang the barn style door for the bathroom.  As part of the remodel I also installed some wardrobe cabinets to increase our storage space and so we could move out some furniture to make the room less cluttered.  I did the same finish on the wardrobe doors.  Since these are veneers the effect is slightly different but still cool.  This is more how it would look on a furniture piece.  I still need to build a trim panel for the side and above the wardrobes to make them look built in.  Just in case you thought I've been sitting around doing nothing for 2 months....

These are some quick pics with my iPhone.