Antique repairs are about memory and detail

RM OF CORNWALLIS — The world of antique furniture restoration is all about detail and sentiment, and those values are reflected in the people who do the work and request it at a local shop outside Brandon.

On the one hand there’s Mike Stuart, a technical-looking fellow who refuses all but one type of glue when he’s working on a project. Stuart has spent much of his life focused on the ins and outs of wood furniture, staring, gluing, sanding, hammering — happily.

“I remember faces and I remember furniture,” he says from his quarters at the shop southeast of town. His workspace is strewn with gadgets, glue and confusing objects, which can all be explained as useful and necessary upon request.

Stuart has been reviving antiques for nearly 30 years with Persnickety Furniture Refinishers. He is one of three woodworkers on staff, who also work together with an upholsterer.

On a Monday afternoon in late May, the Sun joined Stuart while he hand-sanded an oak filing cabinet that was produced sometime in the 20th century. He said that 14 hours will be spent on the project, including disassembling, stripping, sanding, repairing, staining, reassembling and varnishing the piece out of its warped and futile state.

With a paintbrush, Stuart brushes glue into a joint before smacking it together with another, using the ball of his hand, and then tapping the pieces into place with a hammer and clamping them to dry.

“Most of the tools I use are hand tools. I try to use only hand tools,” he says. “It takes a little longer to build stuff this way, but it lasts so much longer.”

The brass accents on the filing cabinet are slated to be buffed down by hand to restore their genuine shine — not painted. The wood will be sanded down manually because power tools would leave an ugly pattern that ruins the look of the piece.

“I’m very particular about everything,” Stuart says. “A lot of people don’t notice it. I see it right away and it drives me nuts.”

An institutional-looking tag with ancient font identifies the cabinet as previously belonging to a newspaper printing company out of Aberdeen, S.D. A quick search of the company yields an advertisement from 1919, posted by a member of the community.

Detail-oriented customers can be expected in this business — it’s not just woodworkers who are persnickety about the work. People commonly have an attachment to pieces they pay to have refinished; and so a close attention to detail comes from both sides of the work, Stuart said.

“I get some people who come and say, ‘That mark was made by my uncle when he was hammering the carburetor,’ and they want me to leave it,” Stuart says. “The bulk of our business is sentimentality.”

Nicko Delos Reyes, a 35-year-old woodworker at Persnickety, said he learned refinishing work through his father and grandfather in the Philippines.

Delos Reyes was restoring twisting wooden legs for an antique, nine-foot-long dining table while speaking with the Sun in late May. He currently works at the shop outside Brandon with his brother, now at least the third generation of the family to take up this line of work.

Marci Crisanti, a customer from Brandon, has paid for several refinishes on sentimental pieces that now are stored in her living room. Crisanti said that the reason she has items restored is that there are memories and loved ones baked into the furniture — memories from her childhood.

“Those people aren’t here anymore, but you’ve got a piece of them with you,” Crisanti said. “That means something to me.”

A tea wagon was passed down several generations in her family and now has a place in her home. She had it refinished 13 years ago at Persnickety after her mother gave it to her. It comes with memories from when she was a little girl — one of her chores was to shine up the tea set for her parents.

“Every time I look at that tea wagon, or I put a Christmas decoration on it, or anything like that, it touches my heart,” she said. “I can remember on Sixth Street, that being in my grandma and grandpa’s house, with the silver tea set on top of it, I can remember that … Well, here I am, 50 years later, and I’ve got that tea wagon in my house.”

She plans to leave the tea wagon — which she said was in mint condition — to her family when she downsizes or dies, she said.

“I would never want to sell it, I would want the piece to stay in the family,” she said. “Now my grandchildren will, you know, go off to it.”

She is the seventh generation in her family to bear the middle name Anne; she is also the second generation to bring items to Persnickety. She said a cedar wood chest that was passed down from her mother was also refurnished, and will be passed on to family members.

Persnickety’s owner, Janine Tousignant, said it takes a certain type of person to care for the work.

“Everbody in here is a perfectionist. That’s in the nature of what they do,” she said. “They have ridiculously high standards and eyes for it.”

» cmcdowell@brandonsun.com