Say hello

...to the first ever Retro Restyling full restore, restyle and repurpose!

This 1940's server was inherited by my friend T and her husband E from his grandmother. Over the years it sat in some unfriendly to furniture elements and inevitably ended up getting a lot of water damage before they rescued it. It was painted a horrible glossy black and partially stripped so it kind of looked charred. 

They really wanted to be able to give this piece a home in their dining room so T gave me a call which was great because this server really needed some Retro Restyling lovin'!

Look at how bad the water damage was, 3 inches of rot had to be cut off the bottom. 

My wood guy, who you will meet in another blog post soon to come, cut off the rot and recreated the swirly detail at the bottom and gave it two new pieces of trim on the sides. He also replaced the back and bottom panel, and the bottom to the drawer as well. This is what it looked like after it was stripped... you can see the blackness in the wood from water damage.

You ready for the after picture?

T has a love for Tuscan colors in her home so she wanted something that was going to be colorful....after some persuasion of course - don't be afraid of color!! ;)

I stained the inside of the drawer and the server itself an English Chestnut to match the dark wood trim she has throughout her house.

Now, please forgive me for these pictures. I'm still trying to figure out my camera and I delivered last night so I had no natural lighting. I ended up pulling the red down in the camera because the shine from the flash and the red overload was driving me bonkers.

Not so red, but now you can see the inside stained....

...and some detail sanding I did.

Plus, when I stripped the old hardware down this particular piece showed how old I thought the server was. You can see it says 1945...and you can see my Christmas socks....

I couldn't be more thankful to be a part of a full restore, restyle and repurpose, especially for another piece of furniture that has sentimental meaning. Now instead of sitting in a basement, this server can be a usable piece and it's still a part of the family!

Thanks for stopping by today!

If you have any questions or comments about the restore, please feel free to leave some below!

If you have a piece that needs some R.R. TLC, please contact me!