PathSource - FURNITURE RESTORER/OWNER: Fixes Antique Wood Furniture Using 19th Century Techniques

× We offer our visitors 5 free video views. Download the free iOS app here for access to thousands of videos. Schools may contact us for full platform access.

Tags:

FURNITURE RESTORER/OWNER: Fixes Antique Wood Furniture Using 19th Century Techniques

About this video

Bernice owns an antique furniture restoration business; most often, she's a one-woman operation unless it's an especially big job. She repairs & refurnishes old pieces using 19th century techniques, such as varnishes and shellac -- all done by hand. She advises: talk to people doing the job you're interested in, and visit their work environment.

Degree: Woodworking

Job Title: Furniture Restorer/Owner

Job Summary: Woodworkers and Furniture Finishers

Job Description

Woodworkers build a variety of products, such as cabinets and furniture, using wood. Furniture finishers shape, finish, and refinish damaged and worn furniture. They often work with antiques and must judge how to best preserve and repair them. They also do the staining and sealing at the end of the process of making wooden products.

Furniture finishers shape, finish, and refinish damaged, worn, or used furniture or new high-grade furniture to specified color or finish.

On-the-Job Training

1-3 years of training is required for woodworking. Less for furniture finishing.

Quick Facts

Average salary

National Statistic Change Location

Confirm

$20,000 - $45,000

Projected Job Growth

2 to 20 percent

Typical schedule

Full-time

Typical workplace

Indoor, Physically demanding, Outdoor

Personal Qualities

Detail oriented, Hand-eye coordination, Strength/stamina, Likes working with hands

Educational Path

Education Requirement

High school degree

Recommended Education Degree

High school degree
Trade/vocational School

Recommended Majors

Woodworking

Related Careers

Carpenters
Computer Programmers
Machinists and Tool and Die Makers
Sheet Metal Workers
Structural Iron and Steel Workers

View Detailed Career Data

PathSource provides free English transcriptions for each of our informational interviews on video which will appear here after you have signed in. Our advanced transcriptions are highly interactive. They scroll down automatically as the video plays and users can jump to a specific part of the video by clicking on any word in the transcript.

For a small fee, we offer transcriptions in different languages, making PathSource a great tool for English Language Learners. This feature is currently available for customers in the education field only.

Please contact us at support@pathsoruce.com if you have any questions or would like to get a price quote for advanced transcripts offered in a second language.

P3.instances[0].transcript.parse_transcript_data({"transcript":"Hi. My name is Bernice Rappaport. And the name of my shop is Gepetto's Antique Restoration. I've been doing this for 15 years. And I take old furniture and restore it., repair damage on it, redo the finishes. And I do it with 19th century techniques. Nowadays, things are done with water-based spray lacquers and polyurethanes. And in the 19th century, they used varnishes and shellac. And all the finishes were done by hand. And so it was a different kind of process and different materials than they use today. And it gives the furniture an entirely different look. A typical day is sort of getting myself organized, contacting clients that I need to contact, and then actually doing the work on the furniture. Right now, I just work by myself. But there have been times that I've had five or six people working for me when we do large jobs. So it's a balance between actually working in the shop and being out in the field, either working at a client's home, or picking up work, or giving estimates. So I would say probably 25% to 30% of my time is outside of the shop. The rest is inside the shop. How did I get to do this? Was divorced. And my most recent experience-- I was married to a doctor, so I had some experience in working in health care. So when I first moved here, I worked in a hospital. It wasn't for me. Thank God I got laid off. It forces you to reevaluate. And I decided to go back to school to do some kind of woodworking and sort of found my way into restoration. If I were to give some advice to some people, I think the luckiest thing you could do is have a job that you enjoy going to work at every day. The other thing that I wish is that young people know that nothing is cast in stone. Like parts of your life change. Your career changes. And you could learn to do other things. And sometimes you don't know where that path will lead you. One of the things I would encourage people to do in terms of finding work is to talk to people who do the work because sometimes the idea of the work has nothing to do with the work environment. And you might enjoy designing, but then you find out that you're in a little cubicle in a large office. And it doesn't feel good to you. So, talk to people. Visit places. Stick your head in. You can come to my shop. I'll tell you all about wood. ","file":{"id":290933,"video_id":"2715266897001","name":"1243-Bernice1-FurnitureRestorer","duration":157316,"thumbnail_url":null}});