Make a new finish match something done 100 years ago.

[ChrisA Edwards]

We have an historic house in our town https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fite-Fessenden_House. It belongs to the County and is maintained by a bunch of volunteers, with minimal budget.

They have an old, Doll house, probably about 100 years old.

They want me to make a table to sit this on, 40"L, 22"W, 16"H.

My wife volunteered me for this project, so I hoping to do this labor and material free to them. They'll reimburse me for wood, but I figure that will be my donation to the house.

Most of the wood in the house is Oak.

So I would like to use a finish that would not make it look like it came out of IKEA.

So I'm leaning towards using Red Oak, but again, am open to suggestions on other species if I can get a more period look with a modern finish.

I have easy access to Red and White Oak, Maple, Cherry, Maple, Popular, Cedar and Walnut.

Thanks

[Jim Becker]

You'd want to pick a species that reflects other furniture in the historic home for consistency and that sounds like it would be oak. As to your finishing process, that's where you'll have to work a little to make it look old, both through coloration and probably some minor distressing. Take a tour and spend a lot of time examining details of existing furniture in the building...I'm sure they would be happy to allow you to do that given you "volunteered" to do the deed. :) That time will be well spent so you can see what little details will be required to make the "new" piece look like it's been there from the get-go.

[Stan Calow]

I've done some repairs to (100+) old dark oak furniture including replacing parts. I got pretty close to the original dark color with stain and dark garnet shellac. The stain I used was I think dark walnut. But the key was the original finish was shellac, so I used the darker shellac to simulate years of shellac aging. you got time to experiment, but seems like some combination of stains will get you close. There are a ton of mission finish recipes out there if the trim is closer to that color.