Dogs Ate My Chairs

Pets can be quite destructive to furniture. In this case, three puppies had their way with some chairs and the feet of the table.

First step to repairing these pieces is to fill in the chewed out wood. For this i used Mohawk colored epoxy putty, which is as durable as the wood, and takes stain well for repairs. It is helpful to add excess putty to insure the level of the filler ends up where you want it when finished sanding.

In the case of the carved table legs, i made a template to guide me with the profile since so much material had been removed.

The filled and shaped leg now ready for finishing.

To restore and match the existing finish, i applied a brown water based stain, and then a couple of coats of shellac to tone, blend and seal the finish. Since the shellac dries to a gloss finish, some light burnishing with steel wool evens out the sheens.

The following picture shows how the brown stain looks before applying shellac. The chair on the right has brown stain over the epoxy repair. The chair on the left has one coat of garnet shellac. One or two more coats of shellac were applied to match the existing finish.

I use shellac a lot in my repair work. It is a durable finish and also works as a versatile toner for blending and matching.