Specializing in American Antique Furniture
and
Expert Furniture Repair by
Home About Us Product Catalog Coming Inventory Items Delivery, Ordering, Contact Us Secure Order Form
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Specializing in American Antique Furniture and
Expert Furniture Repair by
Home About Us Product Catalog Coming Inventory Items Delivery, Ordering, Contact Us Secure Order Form
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We are an experienced antique furniture dealer and a highly trained and experienced furniture restorer. We display and sell our antiques at The Lost and Found an upscale antique mall in Seneca, SC located on historic Ram Cat Alley (see Delivery, Ordering, Contact Us for additional information). We also offer antique furniture online here and with an international antique website. We have sold and shipped our antiques all over the United States as well as other parts of the world. We take great pride in our work and the antique furniture and accessories we offer for sale. Why Us? Before starting Tredwood and ReCrafters, we purchased a furniture repair franchise in Raleigh, North Carolina. We started from scratch and successfully operated it for several years before selling it and moving away. We had both taken early retirement from the corporate world and wanted to do something fun. We thought furniture restoration would be enjoyable and rewarding. It was. We were professionally trained by a company with over 135 years in the industry. We repaired new furniture as well as heirloom antiques over 175 years old; some pieces that sold for well over $20,000 new and others that were only steps from being cast unto the junk heap. We became expert in fabricating furniture parts and color matching and made replacement parts that blended perfectly with the original color and finish of the piece. We did all the work in that repair business and we still do all the work. We are a small shop with no other employees. Our techniques and processes are the same. We offer the same, consistent quality product that we always have. We don't know any other way to do it. But way before we became professional furniture repair people, we were antique buffs. We bought and restored antique pieces for ourselves because we were young and didn't have a lot of money but most of all because we really loved the look plus each piece had a history to it that spoke to us, some real, some just imagined. Nothing has changed much, except we are a little older and have become much better restorers. Living with and using antiques is perhaps one of life's more enjoyable forms of recycling. We can imagine that antique lovers of old may have been among the first people to go (be) green. As restorers, we have saved a lot of furniture, a lot of antiques and more than a few trees and we feel very good about that. Our shop is an environmentally friendly one too. We use safe strippers and finishes that produce only a fraction of the air pollution of conventional solvent based finishes (we also drive a hybrid). So if you love antiques, don't have the time or inclination to search everywhere for the right piece and fix it up, and don't want to spend your children's inheritance (but maybe add to it), we may be the store for you. Or, you may own or wish to purchase a piece of wood furniture that isn't quite right. Whether it be structural integrity or cosmetic appeal, we can help make it right for you. What To Expect Antiques: Our pieces can receive a variety of attention. Each antique offered for sale is inspected. Furniture with a very good original finish that has retained its original intended beauty is usually cleaned and left original. Lose furniture joints are re-glued. Major cosmetic damage is repaired. Damaged structural pieces are restored and missing parts are fabricated, finished to match and installed. Old finishes in good or salvageable condition may be cleaned, rubbed or refreshed. We work to save as much of the originality of the antique as possible, but at the same time provide a piece that most people will be proud to own and display and that will build greater antique value through the years. We will refurbish or refinish only when it enhances the value of a piece. While some of the furniture and accessories we sell may have been refreshed or restored, you should know that our pieces do not look like they are new. The age, wear and character of the piece show through. We repair any significant damage which we feel would markedly detract from the pieces beauty and enhance the rest. Major imperfections are usually removed and any remaining smaller imperfections, which we think make the piece unique and provide its character, remain. Light and oxidation can combine to ruin older finishes over time, however, light and oxidation over the same period of time typically enhance the beauty of the wood under the furniture's finish. The wood fibers can be lightened or darkened depending on the wood type, adding fire and brilliance and greater definition to the grain that cannot be duplicated in the manufacturing processes of today's furniture. That wonderful wood color created simply and exclusively by time is not diminished in our refreshing or restoration processes. We invite comparisons between the condition of our furniture and accessory pieces and our prices to others. We are simply tough to beat. We encourage your questions about our products. We will gladly describe the piece in detail and what improvements if any have been made. Repair: In our repair and restoration work we set out to completely understand what the customer wants and needs and then we try to fully explain the different things we can do and how the piece will look when we are finished. We believe our most important job is the understanding and setting of realistic expectation levels. Once that's accomplished, we set out to exceed those expectations. Refinishing Reduces Antique Value. Not Necessarily. In early America most finishes were paint, penetrating type oil and/or wax which were essentially absorbed into the wood fibers. Even the older paints were mostly absorbed into the wood fibers as they were more like opaque stains than hard coatings which would typify paint in later years. These finishes moved with the wood which was good as wood is constantly moving with temperature and humidity changes. While they offered minimal protection, they could be re-applied easily over and over again and as the wood aged and became worn and polished with years of use, these finishes and continuous wear produced a look and feel (patina) that is quite beautiful, desirable and much sought after today. Conventional thinking about furniture protection began to change with time and so did the way furniture was finished. In the early/middle part of the 19th century, shellac, nitrocellulose lacquers and varnishes began to be used more frequently and soon became the norm. Paint became thicker and more of a coating. By the middle of the 19th century most paints were lead based and sold in cans. These later clear finishes and paint finishes applied layers of thick coating to the exterior of the wood surface, sealing it and providing greater resistance to dirt and damage. Over time, however, light and oxidation turned many of these hard, clear finishes dark, even opaque and because paint and clear finishes had become hard coatings they no longer moved well with the wood underneath. Eventually, this inability to move with the wood resulted in both clear and paint finishes crazing, cracking and inevitably lifting from the wood substrate. Unfortunately not only was most furniture made during this period and later coated in this fashion but earlier furniture made in the 18th century and before was being refinished and recoated using these thicker coatings. Furniture in this latter category with dull, opaque, crazed or lifted finishes is quite unappealing in appearance to most people and we find it to be less valuable, most likely because demand for it in this condition is greatly reduced. Secondly, we find that a significant amount of furniture falling into this category has already been stripped of this old ruined finish and refinished. This seems to further support the lack of appeal of these older, dark, crazed and peeling finishes. Furniture in this latter category when properly restored is made beautiful again, pretty much the way it was originally intended to be. Demand for these beautifully restored pieces is much greater and therefore their value is increased reflecting the greater demand. Restoration of structural and cosmetic work on antique furniture follows similar logic. Because wood moves, glue joints and veneer become loose, gaps can occur causing things to sometimes break loose or just break. In this condition, the vast majority of antique furniture is made less valuable. We have discovered (magazine article quoting the producer of the show) that the message implied in one of television's antique shows has been unintentionally misleading on the subject of restoration and we can believe it. In one show for example, the owner was informed by the expert that their 18th century piece was quite valuable but would have been more valuable had it not been refinished. What is never developed is the condition the piece was in before it was last finished. What if it had been refinished more than once in its lifetime. Perhaps the first refinish was performed on the piece during the mid 19th century using one of the popular hard coatings of the time and would have likely devalued it (probably not obvious to the owners at the time); however, once the hard coating began to turn bad a subsequent refinishing occurred, obviously well done as evidenced in the show. This last refinishing in fact would have served to actually enhance its value, not to original value certainly, but something greater than the previous incarnation. This scenario actually makes more sense to us and reflects a greater wisdom on the part of the current owner than is offered in the show. Certainly well cared for pieces in their original finish that have retained their original beauty like high quality museum pieces should not be refinished. We would agree that anything but the most careful of restoration work if any to these type pieces can compromise their value. Original, high quality antique furniture unfortunately is in the minority, and not very representative of the majority of antique furniture one might find in today's marketplace. We will always tell our customers what work we have performed on each piece and we will price our pieces accordingly. Our promise to our customers: we will never advertise or price our antiques as "original" when they are not. We are a little suspicious of antique dealers who espouse the thinking that all refinishing lessens the value of antique furniture. Why should antique furniture, we wonder, be any different than historic buildings or antique automobiles which are both made more valuable after restoration? It seems a bit self serving to us when you really think about it. A dealer purchases a piece of antique furniture, doesn't have to do anything to it and is able to sell it for more because it's "original" even though it may be ugly and rickety. That's why we believe, as we think most people do, that the majority of antique furniture that is not in good original condition is made more valuable when its been appropriately restored. We Buy Antique Furniture We sell antique furniture which means we must buy antique furniture (we're not allowed to make this stuff). As antique furniture dealers we pursue several avenues to obtain pieces for our inventory. We will buy directly from individuals or persons representing estates as well as from auction houses and from other dealers. We are interested in 19th Century or earlier wood furniture that is in reasonable condition but it does not need to be perfect since we perform our own restoration work. If a piece is in great shape that's even better. We will generally offer a price at the high end of dealer price on well kept pieces. |
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