![\"\"](\"https:\/\/thefinishingstore.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/blogs_posts-Direct-Sunlightopt_large.jpg?9862713164854353616\")
<\/p>\nFinishes deteriorate as they age. First they dull, then they begin to craze and crack. Over a very long time, finishes deteriorate because of contact with oxygen, called \u201coxidation.\u201d But bright UV light (especially sunlight and fluorescent light) accelerates the deterioration so much that you can reasonably think of the deterioration as caused by light alone.<\/p>\n
At some point in the life of better quality furniture (if it is to survive), the finish will likely have to be removed and replaced to renew the protection for the wood. Without a finish in good shape, furniture exposed to moisture or extreme humidity changes will warp, crack, joints and veneer will separate, and worst of all, the furniture will just look bad, which often leads within 10 or 20 years to it inhabiting a land fill.<\/p>\n
Refinishing has gotten a bad reputation in recent years because of the popular PBS TV show, \u201cAntiques Roadshow,\u201d whose widely understood message is, \u201cDon\u2019t refinish; you will lower the value of the furniture.\u201d This message is most unfortunate because it is leading to the destruction of a great deal of wonderful old furniture.<\/p>\n
There are situations where refinishing actually does lower the value of furniture, but these are very rare. Think of it like this:<\/p>\n
A wealthy New England family commissions a chest-of-drawers or table or bed to be built by a local cabinetmaker in 1780. The family uses the furniture for 20 years or so at which time the house passes on to a child who puts the furniture in a guest room with the curtains kept closed so there is very little light.<\/p>\n
The furniture is used now and then when there are guests, but for the most part it just sits unused in a dimly lit room for 200 years while the house is passed down in the family. Eventually, a new owner decides to put the furniture, still with its finish in exceptionally good shape, on the market. This furniture, assuming that is was made originally to high standards, is indeed worth a lot of money, and its worth would be significantly reduced if it were refinished.<\/p>\n
Of course, there was never any thought of refinishing because the furniture was always in such good condition. Furniture is rarely refinished unless it really needs to be.<\/p>\n
There is a small but very enthusiastic market for these rare pieces of furniture that have survived in near original condition. As it turns out, the appraisers on the Roadshow specialize in this market in their day jobs. So they are merely looking out for their own business interests with their admonitions against refinishing.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Unlike the example above, most furniture is used continuously: it is moved and abused, and most importantly for the finish, it is exposed to a lot of light. So the finish on most furniture deteriorates. When this happened in the past, people often refinished the furniture, and it survived as a result.<\/p>\n
Now, however, people are often hesitant to refinish\u2014even common mass-produced furniture from the twentieth century.<\/p>\n
The appraisers on the Roadshow don\u2019t make any distinction between furniture that wasn\u2019t refinished because there was no need, and furniture that was refinished because it needed to be. No allowance is made for furniture with a badly deteriorated finish that wouldn\u2019t have survived if it hadn\u2019t been refinished.<\/p>\n
Instead of saying, as they do countless times, \u201cThis furniture is now worth \u2018X\u2019 dollars but would have been worth 10 or 20 times as much if it hadn\u2019t been refinished,\u201d the appraisers should be saying something like this: This furniture has been refinished, which is good because it surely needed to be. Had it not been refinished, it probably wouldn\u2019t have survived. So even though the furniture would have been worth much more had it survived with its original finish in near-perfect condition, you should be thankful that someone at some time cared enough to put in the time and money to refinish it. Now you can enjoy it.<\/p>\n
Professional Refinishing Magazine<\/strong><\/p>\n A decade ago I was the editor of a trade magazine that was mailed free to professional refinishers all over the country. (Unfortunately, the magazine couldn\u2019t maintain enough advertising income to survive.)<\/p>\n The Antiques Roadshow was very popular at the time, with newly filmed segments almost every week. Professional refinishers everywhere were dealing with customers who wanted their old (but not especially valuable) furniture made to look better but didn\u2019t want the furniture to be refinished because they didn\u2019t want it to lose value.<\/p>\n Never mind that the furniture was mass-produced and worth only $100 or $200 to begin with. And never mind that people would pay more for the furniture if it had a new finish. Refinishing had become a bad word.<\/p>\n The business of many professional refinishing shops suffered as a result.<\/p>\n But, of course it wasn\u2019t. \u201cDon\u2019t refinish\u201d had become too embedded in our culture, and the Roadshow began rerunning old shows, so the destructive message continued, and continues still, to be repeated.<\/p>\n It\u2019s going to take a long time, and a great deal of loss, for us as a culture to finally realize that we have gotten seriously off track when it comes to the preservation of our furniture treasure.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Finishes deteriorate as they age. First they dull, then they begin to craze and crack. Over a very long time, finishes deteriorate because of contact with oxygen, called \u201coxidation.\u201d But bright UV light (especially sunlight and fluorescent light) accelerates the deterioration so much that you can reasonably think of the deterioration as caused by light […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":231601,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1209],"tags":[1473,1474,1400,1214,1262,1419,1475,1227,1229],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thefinishingstore.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231600"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thefinishingstore.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thefinishingstore.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thefinishingstore.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=231600"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thefinishingstore.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231600\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thefinishingstore.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/231601"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thefinishingstore.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=231600"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thefinishingstore.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=231600"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thefinishingstore.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=231600"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/thefinishingstore.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/blogs_posts-Interior-Lightopt_large.jpg?1826530120682547683\")
So, as editor of the refinishing magazine, I decided to confront the \u201cRoadshow\u201d with their destructive message. I called the producer of the show, Peter Cook, and found that he actually agreed with me that the vast majority of old and antique furniture should be refinished when needed. I asked him to write a statement for publication in the magazine to this effect.\u00a0After a long and informative explanation of how the show worked, he wrote this:\u00a0Great, I thought, this is pretty definitive. Problem solved.<\/span>\u201cLet the record show that the Antiques Roadshow generally agrees with this notion: Well-conceived and well-executed refinishing and restoration usually enhances the value of just about any piece of old furniture. Exceptions are those rare (often museum-quality) pieces that have somehow survived in great `original’ condition. If we say or imply the contrary, we should be called on it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n
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