Before I get too much further I should show you the cabinets that we included to have refaced and granite counter tops installed.

 Master Bath 1 of 2

Master Bath 2 of 2

Pool Bath

Guest Room Bath

Nautica Bath

Excuse the peachy color, I shot these with with my cell phone and the color wasn’t great.

Recapping briefly I developed a description of the project, asked contractors for pricing and got an array of prices.  The array of prices is the scary part of this project.  If I received four prices and they we all within a couple hundred dollars of each other, I would give the project to the one I felt the most comfortable with and life would go on.  But in this case one contractor was half the price of the big boys in town.  After some checking with great references I gave the project to the low contractor and decided to include his granite price and have the project done all at once.

We had a very specific schedule we were working with.  The holidays were coming up and we scheduled to go North to see family and planned on returning after the New Year.  Shortly after the New Year we had guest coming down so we wanted the project done before they arrived.  A good long lead time and even if the project took a couple weeks we were good with the schedule (contractor estimated 2 days).

The contractor kept me informed via email the with the progress of the order and we picked a day to begin.

The granite people were first.  I was shocked when I walked into the first bath room (the pool bath) to see the very large miror sitting in the hallway.  I never imagined they would remove the mirrors.  The granite went in without much trouble however on piece of granite didn’t look like the piece we selected.  Our contractor said it was cold and that it would lighten as it warmed.  Over the next several days we watched it get lighter but not quite as light as we had wanted.

With the granite in, the contractor began sanding on the side panels and the cabinet box to rough up the surface so the veneer could be attached with glued.  The veneer looked great!  The contractor had pre-fitted the new cabinet doors with their hinges and began installing them. 
Then the first snag.  The contractor missed the dimension on one of the drawers and the door face was way too small.  Fortunately it was in the master bath so our guest would not see it.  The contractor told me one package of the frames were broken on the end when they were shiped and he would not have enough to complete the frames.  Of course the frame that was damaged was for the guest bath.

I assumed the contractor would run down to the lumber yard get some more material, stain it, cut it…crisis over.  Not the case.  The stain, wood and finish were all corridinated through his Canadian supplier so the final project would all match flawlessly.  So the contractor ordered the new door and more frame material to match the cabinets.

Now we had a couple weeks to wait.  After a couple days the veneer on the side panels of the cabinets began to ripple like aq wavy potato chip.  The contractor came right over to look at the veneer and took photos to send to his supplier.  Turns out it had been really cold in Florida for several weeks.  The veneer sat in his trailer over night, in the cold, and when it was installed the wood expanded and seperated from it’s paper backing.  The supplier agreed to send veneer with a pheonolic backing to eliminate this problem.

This brings up a very important issue for any work involving wood.  Always let the wood sit in the space it’s going to be installed in at least 24 hours so that it can acclimate to the temperature and relative humidity.  A flooring project maybe a couple days just to be safe.

So that’s were we are now.  The next installment should show the completed project.

I’m about midway through a cabinet refacing project and I can tell that this is going to take several intallments to discuss.  I’ll include some photos of the work as we go along.  I’m optimistic the project is going to turn out well but an old friend of mine once told me the definition of an optimist was “someone without much experience”.  Basically the more you know the more you know that can go wrong.

In a former life I had a contracting company and an engineering company, so my approach echoed my years of experience in the construction fields.  I first developed a description of the project incorporating as much detail as I could.  At the very least it included which cabinets were going to be refaced.  And in my case I want some wood mirror frames changed out to matched the new cabinet doors and to update the cabinets in two room we wanted to add legs to the cabinets to make them look more like furniture.

I listed when I wanted the project to begin, requested desired deposit amounts, and asked for a breakdown of cost (as much as they would provide).  Breakdowns describe steps or pieces of the construction that if you want to change or delete at a later date the breakdown will give you cost.  The rule of thumb I always assumed was that in a deduct (where you delete something from a project) you got half of the value.  And in an add you paid twice the value.  If you think you might want additional work or products supplied get pricing for those adds up front.  You’ll see why as my saga unfolds.

So with my description of work, request for references, request for pricing breakdown and any other parameters that I want to define, like timeframe, all written down to provide each contractor the same information to base there bid, I called six contractors that I found in the phonebook and on the internet.

All six needed to visit the house to look at the work in order to give me a price based on the condition they were going to be installed in.  Two of the six wanted me to measure the cabinets and were going to give me a ballpark price over the phone.  I thanked them for there time and declined their offer.  It wasn’t like they were all busy in the first part of 2010 with the economy in the dumper.

The first and the largest cabinet refacing/kitchen/bath remodeler showed up looked at my project description, spent some time measuring cabinets, rolled out his samples, gave me one of their elaborate brochures, ran his calculator for a while and then took a piece of letterhead out and wrote a number down $9,500 and then for emphasis he circled the number.  I asked for my breakdown information, he said he would provide it after we enter a contract.  This wasn’t the info I requested and the price…I really didn’t know if that was a good price or not, but I did know that if it was, I wouldn’t be doing this project now.

The next contractor did the same general routine but this time gave me some breakdown for each of the bathrooms we were going to do.  I was suprised that each of these two contractors could give me pricing right then and there because some of the things like the mirror frames was not part of a typical project.  Nonetheless this contractor’s price was $7,900.  A full $1,600 cheaper then the first contractor.

The third contractor came collected information and said he would email his bid.

And the last contractor did the same thing, took information, showed us his samples and said he would get back to us.  He specifically said he would have to contact his supplier regarding the mirror frames and the legs which were unusual.  He also wanted me to have his list of references so I could talk with them prior to getting his pricing.  I’m not going to spend any time checking references until I know if this contractor has provided a bid that I’m interest in.

The third contractor after several calls proding him to give me a price, quote me a price over the phone that was $6,950.  This was getting down around the $5,000 price that I thought it might be.

The last contractor stalled me even longer telling me that his supplier from Canada was not getting back to him.  He added that while he was frustrated the products he gets from them are both excellent quality and very competitive.  After another week he came back to me with a price $2,000 cheaper than the third contractor, with a very complete description of work, with the breakdowns I had requested.  How could this be?  I called all the references he provided (about 25) and most not only gave him a good references most sounded like they wanted to adopt him.  I checked more with the Better Business Bureau.  I checked for his prior business…all checked out to be believable.

Remember when I said to ask for pricing for possible adds to the project?  We asked for pricing on granite countertops and he had a good number for that.  All total the contract was agreed to for about the same price as the third contractor, including the granite.  Less than most of the numbers I received for cabinet refacing alone.  This contractor also wanted the least amount up front.  If the project turns out good I’ll tell you who he is, but for now I’ll call him contractor 4.

That’s the end of part 1, I’ll write the second part tomorrow.

I wrote in a past article that we had a new puppy and that I was sure I would need to find out how to repair pet damage on furniture.  Well our puppy is getting past that age of eating everything without eating any our our furniture, yes I’m bragging.  However I felt compelled to research and write this article since past pets had created extensive damage to my furniture.

I wasn’t suprised  that there wasn’t much information out there regarding repairing partially damaged furniture.  I talked with some re-upholstery companies who seemed to be the best source of information.  Their advice dealt with a hole chewed  or clawed badly  fabric covering the sofa or chair.  Universally they suggested that extra fabric was abundant on nearly all pieces of upholstered furniture.  One exception is seat cushions which I’ve covered in a prior article.  Sofas usually have cushions of like material that can be used to repair damaged locations.  One even told me that a client wanted a pillow permanently attached to her sofa, covering an area that was eaten by her very large dog.  I thought this was a very easy way to cover damage in the back cushion or back part of a seat cushion.  Likewise the back of sofas will nearly always have material that can be used.

If a sofa rest against a wall, salvaged material frolm the back will near be seen.  A complementary material can be inset into the rear of the sofa to cover the area removed.  If the material covering an arm is destroyed, material from the back will likely be able to recover the entire arm.  The old arm fabric makes a perfect template for constructing the new cover.

I won’t pretend that I’m a skilled upholsterer or that I can even sew, but with todays products and the construction of today’s furniture I feel most repairs can be made by the do it yourself crowd.  The fabric on most arms is streched over foam material and stapled in place.  The face and side materials of an arm typically have a sewn seam and occasionally some cord (or pipping material) to highlight a seam.   Or a covering plate of material is used to conceal streched material beneath the plate.  Again using the old material as a template it is not difficult to recreate the pattern with the salvaged material.

In nearly all cases the backs of upholstered furniture provides an abundant source of nearly unused, perfectly matching material for you repair.  Either covering the entire back or a portion of the back with a complimentary fabric gives you a one of a kind piece of furniture.

Damage to wood legs an arms falls under one of three categories; destroyed beyond all recognition, disfigured, and marked up with teeth or claw marks.  Absent a historic claw foot on a piece of furniture most damage that is severe can be repaired by replacing the leg with a replica of the leg.  Furniture legs almost always come in two’s or more and even a turned legs can be used recreated using another leg as a template.

If the damage isn’t too bad, on short legs I would do what I could to disguise the damage but then I would leave it alone.  On taller legs like a dining room chair I would use wood filler, sand and stain to match.  For minor damage read the article on using touch up pens.

Not until I decided to write this article had I thought how we had been practicing this in our own home.

We didn’t repurpose items so much for conservation as we did because we liked the design of an item. 

Just in the last year I can think of five places where we repurposed objects starting with a lazy susan that came with a new patio set we purchased.  Since the patio set was going to be located on our lanai we didn’t need an umbrella and therefore we didn’t need a lazy susan.  The lazy susan was about two feet in diameter with a unique Celtic knot pattern and of course a hole for the umbrella in the middle. 

We had been searching for art to put in our master bathroom without much luck.   The lazy susan mounted on the wall in our bathroom clearly looks like a one of a kind piece of art.  It went great with other objects we had placed in the bathroom and best of all it cost us nothing.

In our midwest home we have very high sloping ceilings.  In the familyroom we had been searching for an object to put on the walls that would not be so weighty as the very large, over-sized mirror we had just removed.  Here we clearly made an effort to look at many options in an effort to get exactly what we wanted.   Ultimately we ended up using a screen we had stored in our basement.  The screen looks like woven sticks or reeds in each section.  We disassembled the screen and used two of the three panels mounted horizontally (one over the other with a space between) to visually cover a large section of the wall.  It worked great, with it’s see through design the wall color was visible in the background.  We didn’t think it was perfect because it didn’t show off the height of the ceilings and finally place a wire basket above and to one end of the screens and it looks great,  almost like a piece of modern art.

The mirror we took down was so large it really didn’t go in any other room in the house, but a large piece of it did go in my workout room in the basement and gave it some class which it needed badly.  Those healthclubs have nothing over us.

If you watch any of the decorating shows on HGTV you will see one of their favorite ways to make a space feel larger is mirrors.  And one uses of mirrors is to back bookshelves.  The remainder of the large mirror removed from our familyroom was used to back a book shelve in a guess bedroom.  Remember large bathroom mirrors can be cut to size and repurposed for this use without much effort.

In a very similar vein we have repurposed serving trays, wallpaper, tile samples, and fabric pieces to make our own unique wall hangings.  Serving trays can be used after attaching a mounting wire or hook to the back.  We have a tray we purchased in Spain that had the exact colors we need for a bedroom.  And another tray collected from our travels we used in a plate rack as decoration in our familyroom.  The plate rack works great because we can press the serving tray into action anytime we need it.  Framing a piece of tile or wallpaper is another way to take a color or pattern you liked and incorporate it into your house.

All of these ideas were free or very low cost.  All created one of a kind pieces of art or furnishings.  And all are more enjoyable to look at everyday because we came up with this repurposing of these objects.

At recycledfurniture.com decluttering creates an opportunity to sell furniture and buy furniture.  And that’s good for the enviroment and good for you.

 We recently bought a winter home in Florida and everything we bought in Florida was for that specific house.  When we were done we found we had everything we needed and not a lot more to clutter up our lives.  At our other home we have accumulated stuff over more than 25 years in this home and 15 years worth of stuff from older homes.

The more we looked at our clutter the more we became determined to change our enviroment which meant getting rid of a lot of stuff.  If I hadn’t needed something I was saving for twenty years, I likely wasn’t ever going to need that piece of stuff for another twenty.  And even if I needed that exact piece of stuff the very next year I decided I’d rather have the space and buy the purged stuff when I needed it in the quantities I needed and discard the rest in favor of decluttering.

So my rule was simple, if I hadn’t touched or needed the thing I was holding in the last year, it was either discarded or sold.

In the garage my life became very simple.  I knew what I had and where everything was, with the results being clear isles at the side of the cars,  room to store the new giant trash cans required by the city and boxes of great garage sale items other guys would need to clutter up their garage.

The basement was very similar in results lots of great garage sale items and getting rid of some old lawn furniture and ping pong table gave us tons of room we didn’t have.  We even took a shelf we didn’t need in the garage any longer and put it in the basement to help organize our stored items.

But the biggest change that I see every day was in our office.  Old office furniture stemming back from the days of huge computer monitors and desktop computers served to store a lot of unecessary stuff.  These days we have two laptops, a need for file storage and a wanting for more room.

We sold the old computer desk and hutch, the office desk, bookshelves and printer stand.  Once all the clutter was gone we were amazed how big the space was.  And even more amazing was how many of our children noticed one of the walls in the office had tongue and groove oak paneling.  It has been that way for all twenty plus years we have been here.  The clutter was the first thing that caught you eye. 

Now we have two regular desk, a printer stand/file storage and a bookshelve that is both attractive and functional.  And the space still looks large.  Here again I thought I had an idea what was in the office furniture….. I didn’t.  I do now, and I know where everything is. 

I am very careful what I keep these days, I like being decluttered.  The net results was that the sale of furniture and garage sale items yeilded a net gain after purchasing the new furniture.  The new furniture was new to us, looked brand new, but we bought furniture that was previously own and gently used.

A win-win life altering event.

We recently got a goldendoodle puppy that was 10 weeks old.  He is and will be a joy in our life for many years to come we hope.  But one of the trying times with a puppy is  from about that 10 week old time until nearly a year when they try to eat everything in site including your furniture.

 When we thought we might be getting  a dog and talked to our friends about it, most all of them told us about “The Dog Whisperer” on TV, so we started watching.  Like most people we learned that it is us that needs most of the training not our dogs.  And a lot of Ceaser Milans wisdom we have try to employ, so far very successfully.

First and foremost is to excersize your pet.  A tired puppy is a sleepy puppy and a sleepy puppy is a puppy that’s not eating my furniture.   Second is training.  Don’t let your pet up on any furniture if you don’t want him on even just one piece of furniture.  They understand much better that they can’t get on any furniture rather than  not being able to get on a specific piece of furniture.

And lastly you can show them praise and love.  When they are behaving well around your furniture show them that is action that get’s them love.

You have to give them every opportunity to succeed by sending them as clear as message you can.  For example don’t go in your backyard that has 15 tennis balls in it and decide to teach your dog to fetch.   He won’t know which one to retrive.  Teach him to fetch with only one ball to fetch.

In this same light if you come into our house unanounced you will find about 15 chew toys scattered about our floor.  This isn’t to confuse him, it is to give him many options of things to chew on that aren’t furniture, drapes, carpet, etc.  He knows his toys and he knows he can chew on his toys.

While we don’t promote one product over another however I have to make an exception in this case “Granny’s Bitter Apple” is a spray avaliable at most pet store that will help train your dog not to eat whatever it is you want to protect.  We’ve used it on plants, furniture, throws, extention cords and everything else we want our pet to not eat.  It works rather well and won’t hurt your dog.  You will have to reapply the spray routinely until the urge to eat that protected object passes.

I’m sure we will have some future articles about repairing furniture chewed on by a pet but so far we are feeling very lucky.

At one time caning of chairs and furniture was an art form to get the cane pattern precise and taught but no more.  Caning replacements are mass produced in sheets available in some hardware stores and most craft stores. 

After measuring the size of the existing cane add two inches (minimum) in both directions to account for mounting methods.  Typically cane is held in place by a backer rod or fits inside a strecher loom.

If the securing technique is a backer rod simply place the cane sheet over the opening and space equally over all sides.  The flexible backer rod fits in a slot in the furniture piece so locate the slot and begin a the most visible spot of the cane and drive the backer rod into the slot being careful not to fold or crease the cane.  At this time I cut several small pieces of the backer rod and drive them into the slot equally around the cane opening, securing the cane into position as I go back the the main backing rod and continue to drive the rod into the slot working your way around the piece.

 As you come to the small pieces of backer rod remove them and continue with the main backer rod.  When the piece has been completely installed cut the backer rod so the entire rod will fit into the slot.  Typically the slot and backer rod is covered with a piece of wood configured to fit the perimeter to the cane.  Re-installing the finish piece will complete the project.

Similarily strecher looms are used in some cane applications.  These looms are very similar to the looms used for embroidery  or making rugs.   The cane is laid over the smaller loom and the outer loom is pressed over the cane and tightened to secure the cane between the two looms.  Here again a finished piece of wood typically covers the loom to give a clean finished appearence.

You may finish the cane with stain or leave in a natural color.

This is a fairly easy project once you have located the source of the cane material.  Let us know how your project goes.

Here is an inexpensive way to cover up the visible effects of everyday wear and tear on your furniture.  Furniture stores have used these techniques for years. If you have wood or wood-looking furniture pieces and have nicks and dings, try to determine what color you think the wood is, i.e. oak, walnut, pecan, etc. Most of the large home improvement stores carry stain pens for touch-up.  These touch-up pens come in the same color as the wood stains.  If you have a piece of furniture that looks like oak to you, you will be able to find a pen shown as oak.These pens have the same stain you could buy in cans, however these have a felt tip applicator which cuts down on the mess and is convenient to use any time.  The ones that I have used suggest shaking them to mix the stain in the pen and then apply to the nick.  You will be surprised how much better your pice of furniture will look with such a little effort. What if your furniture is painted instead of stained?  Here’s another idea with several applications.  Lowes is the only place I’ve seen so far with a display of “Glidden” tester bottles.  These are 2 fl. oz. bottles of paint in many different colors with small applicator brushes inside. I guess paint is getting so expensive “Glidden” decided to give the public a way to sample a color cheaply and in the process has given us a way to buy paint to touch-up our painted furniture.  So try to determine the color you want to match or take a sample with you and find the color closest to your’s in the tester bottles.  There are a lot of different colors so you should be able to get close.  Use the brush in the bottle to touch-up the dings in your painted furniture.  Again you will be impressed how much better your furniture will look sans nicks and dings.The tester bottles also work great on wood-work as well.  We keep a bottle of white around specifically for the purpose of touching-up dings in our baseboards, doors and millwork.  If your wood work is stained the touch up pens work great for this purpose as well.

Absolutely! Saving natural resources, saving energy, saving our planet.

The main focus of being earth friendly are; re-use, recycle, and conserve.  Purchasing a piece of previously owned furniture is re-use.  So big deal you saved a few bucks and that’s why you came here to look in the first place.

 At the risk of inspiring you beyound just saving you some money let me tell you the numerous things you just did for the Earth.

The furniture you purchased did not go into a landfill some where.   Think of the impact if others think of re-use and re-finish to fit their needs rather than to discard that piece of furniture.

Now comes the exciting part.  Even in the simplest of furniture, let’s say a wood chair with a cushion on it, energy and resources are consumed at nearly every level of production.  Let’s think about what goes into making that chair.

The logger likely commutes to the mountain in a vehicle that consumes gasoline, he uses a chain saw that uses gasoline and chain oil, the device that lifts the wood to the collection point uses deisel fuel and then the wood is transported to a saw mill by a truck using deisel fuel.

So far we have a log ready to be made into something.  Usually steam is used to strip the trees and to power the saws.  Many mills use their own waste products to burn to power their saws which conserves energy cost to them.  So that’s a good thing, right? It can be if the pollutants from the combustion of the waste product is monitored and regulated.  And any waste water is cleaned up before it is dumped into a lake or a waste water system.

Now the wood needs to be transported (deisel fuel) to either a distribution point like a lumber yard or to the end user.  Saws and lathes in many furniture companies use electricity to cut and shape the wood into the chairs components.  Paints and stains are used that typically contain volatile organic compounds (VOC) whose manufacture and use pollutes our waterways and contaminates our landfills.  The painting process usually uses compressed air made with the use of electricity.

The cushion would likely made from man made products like foam and a synthetic fabric.  Foam and synthetic fabrics use some form of heat and electricity to manufacture although their main threat to the planet comes from their inability to breakdown over time in a landfil.  Even if the cushion were made from natural fabrics like cotton and goose down, water and bleaches from the manufacutring end up in our waste water system.

Having already began the detail breakdown of energy and natural resources consumed in the manufacture of this chair let me simply say the chair will be assembled with screws, metal brackets and the like which were mined, processed, transported, formed and transported again to the furniture manufacturer.  Of course the chair will be packaged in some manor and shipped to distribution.

Throughout the entire process of development paperwork follows: the log, cut wood, inventoried product, the cotton, goose down, screws, trucking manifest and sadly I could go on and on.

So did you do a good thing? Did you make an effort to save the planet? Yes you did and if you could see my standing ovation you would have one now.