Our Craftsmen can help bring your woodwork back to life and help to prolong its life span, wether joinery or furniture.
Architectural Joinery Restoration
We are able to assist in the restorations of many projects, including grade 1 listed buildings. Unfortunetly due to the privacy requested by the clients on our previous listed projects we don’t have all of our photographs to show on the website. If you are looking for someone to do the restoration on your project please contact us and we will be able to direct you to our references.
Below we have photos and links to other projects in which we used skills shared with the restoration process.
Our workload changes with each new project, the skills required varies and often overlap ……
We can offer structural / cosmetic repairs on Joinery including preservation / conservation
Furniture restoration and Furniture conservation.
The making of new items to match period with full finishing service.
Furniture Restoration & Conservation
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Julian can be contacted on 07790 909691 and is based in Sussex, covering London and surrounding areas.
We of coarse work further afield job dependant. Please enquire to discuss
New Mahogany Legs
These legs were commissioned to complete an extendable George 2nd period antique Dinning table.
The client wished to seat more people and then required new table leaf and leg sets to complete the period look, all details were crafted to matched from the existing including the colour work which Julian Penrose Smith provided.
The remaining work was completed on site at the clients home, installing leg mounts and table leaf joining catches to complete the desired look.
French Bed Extension
This project was commissioned via an interior designer who’s client had located the bed they liked but wanted greater comfort.
Our job was to simpafecticly increase the head and foot boards and upgrade the mattres support.
The first job was to provide a full sized template to the clients of the proposed shape of the bed after the remodel. just to confirm they were happy with the direction to commit to size and overall look.
Gothic Door Restoration
These lovely door sets originally built in 1873 as part of our clients private Grade 1 residence were in need of major restoration.
Cosmetically they have aged well, structurally not good.
There are a pair of identical sets that face each other within the billiard room and both have the identical historic problem…Gravity !
It would seem that both doors suffered from the same craftsmanship or lack of craftsmanship ….. on inspection the Oak panels were small in size ( more then just expected shrinkage from age ). From the day they were fitted within their manufacture and this shortcoming had gradual long term implications.
The day to day operation was assisted by planing material off the bottom of the doors probably without understanding or willing to resolve to underlining issue. The doors only relying on the glue and wedges to hold everything in place… until model heating was installed and reactivated/relaxed the animal glue that the doors were assembled with…. Compounding problems !
The door design with its very generous widths and extra weight from the glass would need its construction of each element to play a part in its structural integrity.
Being glazed and only half panelled has very limited bracing to keep the item square and true. Also having their bottoms dragged on the floor for most of their life and locked into position, we were also gifted with the doors gaining a twist on the opening side ….. Joy !
Our clients were made a where of the doors symptoms and the coarse of action required.
There removal and openings templated, doors fully boarded whilst in transit.
Complete careful disassembly and resizing of the panels, correction of the twist with addition of new wedge shaped parts on the bottom.
The fun can be seen in the pictures below !
Greenhouse Restoration
This wooden framed greenhouse had been neglected over many years and had passed the point of simple maintenance. It was also surrounded by established, healthy vines.
The client brief was to reuse materials that could be reused, such as the remaining glass, and salvageable joinery, and to remake and replace parts that could not be reused or repaired.
The glass house had been built on a lime mortar bonded brick wall which had subsequently suffered badly from exposure. The weight of the joinery and glass of the greenhouse had caused the front opening sash window and sill wall to bow and drop. The front wall had its original heating ducts in the brickwork which would have been filled with manure and straw. These openings had formed weak points which also allowed the joinery to drop, which in turn pulled the top of the roof ridge down and out, causing glass panels to break. This in turn allowed more water in, causing more woodwork to rot.
The restoration of the green house required the complete lower front opening sash unit to be remade from soft wood, the sills to be remade in oak, together with the top opening sash windows, all of the small long glazing bars, some of the main joists on the gable end of the green house and a new door.
The repair and rebuild took place in and around the vines.
Carved Fireplace
The carved fireplace had been purchased from an architectural salvage yard by the client many years before and had been stored in cardboard boxes and forgotten.
The brief was conserve and repair the fireplace, manufacture a new back panel from softwood and make it ready to be installed in a new location.
The fireplace surround came to us in pieces and in a poor condition, carrier bags of small fragments. Over time the animal glue that had been used originally on the fireplace had failed due to damp conditions, leaving all components dry and held together by nails only.
We totally disassembled the surround and cleaned it. A new back panel was manufactured and pieces that were missing from the original surround such as carved mouldings, a carved cherub, carved fruit etc were remade and fitted onto the new softwood back panel.
The cherub and fruit carvings which had been made from walnut, had suffered from moisture and worm. These carvings were repaired by replacing any soft, mushy rotten wood with new timber to give them some structural strength.
The repaired fireplace was assembled for the clients in the workshop to view before being polished to the clients’ chosen colour.
French Farmhouse Table in Cherry
This commission was to repair a French table, made of cherry wood which has suffered from shrinkage of the table top – the five main planks of the table top had reduced in size over time. The mitred cleats at each end of the top had restricted this movement and caused the planks to split at their weakest points.
The client brief was to resize the table top, to smarten up, remove water marks and re-polish without losing charm.
Victorian Sofa
This project was to repair a Victorian sofa that had received damage to one leg. The leg had also been badly repaired in the past.
The damaged turned leg, made in walnut, had split and lost mouldings. It was drilled and new timber inserted into the base in order to gain a secure fixing point for the castor. The split and lost mouldings were repaired and made good, then polished to match.
Gallery
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