Notes from the shop.
Finishes, recipes, and the occasional rant about bad 80s refinishes. Written when a project teaches me something worth writing down.
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The Heywood Wakefield recipe that took me three tries
3 drops TransTint Honey Amber. 1 drop TransTint Medium Brown. Per one pint of thinned clear lacquer. That's it. That's the recipe. But getting there took three tries and a deep dive into color theory I didn't expect.
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Bringing a cedar fence back, Oak Cliff
A modern horizontal cedar fence, silver from UV and green along the bottom, brought back to warm in three stages. A reminder that not everything weathered needs replacing.
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A bathroom ceiling, whole again
A crunch from the attic and a ragged hole over the shower. A drywall repair is mostly patience — and knowing that the finish has to land invisible in raking light.
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The chairs came back rock solid
A set of vintage dining chairs with green velvet seats, lovely from five feet and unsafe from five inches. Structural repair on old dowel joints — no refinish, just bones.
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The Dillingham Esprit Highboy, down to raw walnut
A 1960s Milo Baughman–designed highboy arrived with a dead finish, failing veneer, and drawers that refused to glide. The fix went deeper than paint.
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A 1956 Heywood-Wakefield, back to Wheat
A genuine 1956 birch dining table, arrived with failing lacquer and water rings deep into the grain. Restored to the Wheat glow Heywood-Wakefield is known for.