A Bench For French
A Bench For French
A sweet little renovation of a 30 year old bench
A sweet little renovation of a 30 year old bench
This has to be one of our favourite types of renovation as the transformation is plain for all to see!
The Challenge
The Challenge
All to often we are presented with a piece that has started looking a little sorry for itself. It may have been well maintained for most of its life but only takes a few hard winters to show signs of distress. In this case our wonderful client commissioned us to show a special bench presented to him in the 1990's a bucket load of
Tukosawa Creative Loving!
Water damage had taken its toll, especially (and this is typical) on the feet and under the slats where water has pooled for a period of time. Moss had also began to make an unwelcome appearance and this is a big issue as the fine roots penetrate unprotected surfaces.
What we did...
After removing the seat slats and all the rotten sections we sanded all surfaces back to the original beautiful teak frame. Discovering great quality timber makes us very happy as we now had a firm idea of what was required and how the finished piece would look. Rotten sections were replaced with replacement teak cut to size and all gaps filled with a high quality exterior wood filler. In the case of the feet where around 5cm of each leg had to be removed, we scoured our timber store and finally settled on some mahogany rails that also added extra strength.
All surfaces were then double stained with a 5 year woodstain having a light sand in between to remove any raised grain. For timber with a reddish or dark colour we like to use an Antique Pine stain as it adds a certain warmth to the appearance. Slats were then reattached with new screws and angle plates for extra strength.
Mrs Tukosawa Creative took on the role of rejuvenating the copper plaque (No mean feat!) and after much trial and error and development of her special cleaning solution (available upon request) the plaque was ready for remounting after all surfaces had been waxed to further protect from weather damage.
What the client said...
“I asked Wayne at Tukosawa Creative to breathe new life into my bench which has suffered from three house moves and several years outside in our wonderful British climate giving it a very tarnished look coupled with some wood rot.
His skill brought back to life the bench I had been given as a gift in 1998 and made it look as though it was brand new again”
Nigel French, Wells”