Before and After: Edging

This seems like quite a common problem for a lot of furniture - the veneer edging around your table gets caught and snaps off. I recently purchased a sewing box that had this problem. Sometimes, if you had the snapped pieces, you stick everything back on and consolidate any lifting sections, but my sewing box had pretty much all its edging missing. What to do?

Luckily, in the majority of DIY shops you can buy wood edging. I found it in the aisle along with the sheets of laminate wood and it came in a coil in lots of different colours. If the sewing box was an antique then I would have forked out for proper thin strips of veneer, but the wood edging in the DIY shop is ideal for this mid-century piece of furniture. The great thing about this edging is that it comes with an adhesive strip on the back. All you need to do is run over the front surface with a hot iron and the adhesive will melt and adhere to the surface.

I started by measuring the length of the strip and cut it to size using a sharp scalpel. I also had to make my strips a bit thinner. I removed all the old edging and removed any adhesive that remained on the surface. I held the strip of edging on the surface of the box and ran over with a hot iron. Once all the edges were applied I used a very fine file to neaten the edges. I then coloured the edging using some Liquid Gold (a wood cleaner and restorer) and a thin layer of beeswax which matched up the colour perfectly to the original surface.

I am very pleased with the results! It is such a simple process, so there is no excuses for having missing edges on your tables. And it goes to show it is worth the effort as I managed to sell this lovely box on its second outing at a market in Bristol. Success!
xx