An Oak Buffet in Green

I've been cutting back on my blog posts a bit, they take up a lot of time that I can be using to actually work on furniture. I might posting more once things quiet down around here a bit, or maybe not.
      Either way I definitely wanted to write a post on this unique and wonderful vintage oak buffet. I say vintage because, to be honest, I'm not entirely sure just how old it is. It could be over a hundred years old, or right around a hundred years old, or it could be slightly newer. I've tentatively dated it to 1915-1935. One of the things that's throwing me off on assigning a more specific date is the form. It's kind of an over the top Jacobean interpretation, and certainly we see that quite a bit, especially in dining room pieces, during the 1920s, but I've never seen one so compact, robust, and well built. For those reasons, I suspect it may actually have been made in England, not America. Either way, I'm sure it has stories to tell!
          One of the stories it told me was "someone very stupid left something wet on my top for a very very long period time'. That's one of my least favorite stories, black water stains are a bastard to remove. I tried everything to sand and bleach the water damage out of the top, no dice. And I didn't want to risk removing the oak veneer top, because gods know what's under it. So I tried something new, something I'd never done before but always assumed was way waaaaaaay outside my abilities- I replaced the veneer top. And holy smokes, GAME CHANGEER. It was SO easy to do, SO affordable, and, well, I'll let the pictures speak for themselves in terms of results-

I refinished the piece custom for a client. She used a thistle as inspiration for the colors, very fitting because interwoven on the impressive applied molding are four big stylized thistles! I won't lie. I'm so in love with this piece, and so sooooooo pleased with how it turned out!