Beautiful Maddox Antique Secretary (Restor-A-Finish Product Review)

Josh's family is big on hitting up yard sales, and seeking out those once in a life time deals.  If you have ever been yard selling, then you know that they can be hit or miss.  However, sometimes when you hit, you hit a gold mine.  That is exactly what happened with this Secretary that we purchased in North Carolina.  It had everything that you would like to see, lattice was completely intact, veneer was generally in good shape for its age, the hardware was perfect, and it did not have a terrible odor from years of being in a smoker's home like some pieces do.  All in all, this was a home run; we just needed to do some minor touch-ups on it.  

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I wish that we had taken better before pictures of this piece to truly show you how the product Restor-A-Finish by Howard is liquid magic.  However, we were able to take some pretty good before and after pictures of the inside of the drawers, so I hope that they can represent how awesome the product is, and why we generally approve this product for restoring antique pieces of furniture.  

Step 1: Find the right shade of Restor-A-Finish for you.   There are a few choices here, but the key is to find a shade that is the closest to the color of the original finish on the piece that you would like to use it on.  

• Restor-A-Finish Mahogany (This is what we used on the secretary)
• Restor-A-Finish Golden Oak
• Restor-A-Finish Walnut
• Restor-A-Finish Dark Walnut
• Restor-A-Finish Ebony
• Restor-A-Finish Maple Pine
• Restor-A-Finish Neutral
• Restor-A-Finish Cherry
• Restor-A-Finish Dark Oak

Step 2: We recommend that you clean up the surface area that you will be using the Restor-A-Finish on.  Do not use, I repeat, do not use furniture polish or any other chemical to clean up the surface area, because it may affect the finish that the Restor-A-Finish will produce.  We recommend that you use a wet rag to wipe away in dust or other particles from the surface area.  

Step 3:  On the back of the Restor-A-Finish can it recommends that you try it on a small inconspicuous spot before you put it on the rest of the area you wish to restore.  We sort of skipped this step, but if you have a piece that is in really good shape, and it is debatable whether you should even use Restor-A-Finish, then this is definitely an important step to ensure that it won't do more damage than good.  

Step 4:  This is the application step.  Put the Restor-A-Finish on a clean/dry rag, and wipe on to the surface area.   Make sure that you are applying the Restor-A-Finish with the wood grain.  Do not pour the Restor-A-Finish directly on the surface area, and make sure that you wipe the surface area dry after applying it.  I know that we do not have before pictures of this, but we had a couple water damage rings on the desk portion of the secretary that needed a little more rubbing than the other areas.  In order to take care of this we used super fine (0000) steel wool with the Restor-A-Finish, and it pretty much took care of the issue.

Step 5:  This step is pretty easy, but you need to wait around 30 minutes before you do anything else to the piece.  

Step 6:  Howard also makes a product called Feed-N-Wax, which is a heavy duty wood polisher and conditioner (think furniture polish on steroids).  After waiting 30 minutes, we applied the Feed-N-Wax to the secretary to produce a truly wonderful finish on a beautiful antique piece.