Thread: Swedish Biedermeier revival dining table

I don't really need any help on this yet - it's just an opportunity to show off a project that's been sitting for a while but where I've now got my act together.

It's a 1920s Swedish Biedermeier revival dining table and chairs made of birch - a nice piece of provincial carpentry which I bought at a Stockholm auction for comparative pennies before I moved back home.

The seats have dreadful material on them but are otherwise in great nick...they'll just need a quick wax and polish after I recover the seats (inner upholstery seems fine). Likewise the base of the table.

The top of the table however seemed like the shellac had seen better days and there were ridges all over the place. If I'd been smart, I would've just sanded the shellac back a bit then rubbed it again.

But I got delusions of grandeur (beyond the station of the furniture itself) and thought I should try and French polish it for serious so I started trying to get the absolute perfect smooth surface on the existing shellac.

Disastrous. Ended up with all sorts of ridges (worse than were already there), then discovered some of the veneer was bubbling. Then tore a ligament in my forearm.....it sat in a bathtub for two years.

Now I've just bitten the bullet, stripped all the shellac from the table top, gently sanded to get rid of some of the inexplicably numerous scratches on the original surface (under the shellac!) and rubbed the first half with shellac today.

And it came up beautifully, so I apparently haven't lost my touch (Iphone picture attached)

I'll include a "before" shot of the next half which I'm aiming to nail before the weekend - hopefully taken with a real camera and eventually the whole set. I'll be selling this one I think.