Got all the big jobs done around the house? Here’s some help for those nagging little furniture repairs.
If you need to repair a piece of furniture and you want to match the wood color, don’t use ordinary wood filler. Make your own. Get some sawdust from some hidden part of the furniture by sanding it, and mix this with a small amount of ordinary carpenters glue. The filler will retain much of the color of the sawdust used. This technique works best on small holes.
If you have a cabinet door that’s sticking slightly, you can remove the excess by simply placing a piece of sandpaper in the opening where the door sticks. Then, open and shut the door a few times. The sandpaper will take down the high spot in no time.
If you have a cabinet in which two doors meet in the middle, the doors usually won’t meet perfectly; you’ll end up with a gap between the doors. You can seal this gap by installing a stop on the inside of one door; a simple strip of wood will do the trick. Or you can cover the gap completely from the outside, by installing some decorative trim on the outside edge of one of the doors.
You can repair a scratch on finished furniture with a wax crayon. Just rub the crayon along the scratch, leaving wax where the scratch was. Then rub it off with wax polish.
To repair a dent in furniture, try putting a little cold water on it, cover the area with a piece of sandpaper and hold a hot iron over it. This forces water into the wood cells, expanding them back to normal.