A customer found us by doing a Google search, and called us to ask us about refinishing a Stickley dining table she’d picked up for a song at a garage sale.  The table sits in their south-facing kitchen area and gets beat upon by the Colorado sun year-round.  It had taken a beating, and the finish was simply just at the end of its life.

We picked up the table, and brought it back to the shop, where we cleaned it, and remomved the table-top from the base. We began our usual sanding to remove the finish and stain, and discovered that the table, while it was a genuine Stickley, was not the solid-wood the manufacturer claimed, evidenced by the veneer through which we’d sanded.

We weighed our options and the cost of replacing the veneer versus building a new, solid cherry tabletop.  The customer was out of country, and we sent an email and waited with baited breath.  Much to our relief, she gave us the go-ahead to create a new tabletop.

We went to our supplier and selected some beautiful clear cherry, and got to work measuring, planing, jointing, cutting, and assembling the tabletop in the Stickley breadboard style.  We cut and installed 9 keys along the tabletop, and gave it a hand-scraped finish before applying a custom stain  to match the existing legs and chairs, then added 6 coats of semi-gloss polyurethane to provide another 15 years of protection.

We delivered the table and the customer was so delighted with the way the new tabletop looked, she hired us to refinish some doors and her kitchen cabinetry as well.