Many days, I wonder if it’s worth it. To invest all this effort and energy, just to refinish a single piece of furniture, am I crazy?

Many days I believe I’m off my Stickley rocker, but if what I do fails to possess a modicum of madness, then my work quickly descends into deadness. I’ve lived a life on the straight and narrow, pushing my cart down the expedient Ikea aisles, and you know, that didn’t work out so well.

I mostly work on discarded and low-cost furniture from yesteryear. The castaways. The junk. The wouldn’t touch with a 10-foot poles. If I stumble into a jewel—like a Lane Acclaim—I never turn it down; I do love fine furniture. Yet, the restoration, repair, and refinishing of an abandoned piece keeps me coming back to the shop.

Reinstatement. That’s where meaning lives, for me and my clients.

I am privileged; I get to work on furniture that means something to people. As I peel back paint, remove one-hundred-year-old varnish, and clean away everyday dust and grime from cracks and crevices, I’m working inside the memories of generations, through the love and grief of moments never to be lived again. Along the way, I find black-and-white pictures and relics of assumed significance. But, the cost of these restorations often exceeds the price of that piece’s sale value, which I tell my clients before we start, but nevertheless, meaning lives outside the bounds of profit and we begin anyways, irrationally. The best way to start most things.

When I tell people I’m a furniture professional, they assume I build furniture. But I don’t own a table saw or a planer. Nor do I possess a carpenter’s square. I don’t enjoy building furniture; I enjoy restoring old pieces, finding ways to preserve their essence, while delivering them into the future, different but recognizable. If I change its past, I change what it is, and that’s not my trade; I trade in revitalization.

I believe refinishing furniture is a worthwhile way to spend one’s days. Is it sensical? Rarely. Profitable? Occasionally. Meaningful? Always.

And what more could I ask for than that? Aside from a structurally-sound Stickley rocking chair in need of a fresh coat of lacquer.