The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

Good grief !! Whatever that is he really slopped in on.

Bill K

Ouch! That's truly a horror, Chris-- It's hard to imagine someone hearing "refinish" translates that to "paint". Try OrthoFan's method. If you apply stripper to it, it will melt the paint and the original finish and you'll have all that brown gunk in the grain of the wood. Hopefully with some patience and time, you can get it all off. Let us know how it goes--

Brad Abell

That finish is IDENTICAL to one my friend received on a Steinite radio he sent out for refinishing!

I had found an old Steinite shipping crate at an antique shop, and got it for my friend as a Christmas present, knowing he had the correct matching radio for it. Well, my friend decided his radio looked a little rough next to this nice-looking crate, and sent it off for refinishing. After many weeks, a slopped-on opaque brown paint over the original shellac finish was the result! Hope this isn't the beginning of an epidemic....

It may not be the best time, but you could ask the guy that painted it what he used and if he did anything to the finish beneath.

Chris, it looks like you are in NC... where? Who did this? If you ever need any help with anything there are several of us in the Charlotte area who can advise you or teach you how to repair your own stuff... PM me if you need anything.

We call these refinishers "ONION REFINISHERS", because when they are done, it just makes you cry.

If it's latex, acetone should take that right off and not bother what's underneath. Usually when people do work like that, they hardly ever bother removing the old finish. I bought a C-19 Edison years ago for $35 because of the records and it was painted like that only it was oil and had been on there for a long time. So I put records I didn't want with it and marched it off to an auction house that was here in those days and it sold for $550! I thought Gordon gave me the wrong check or something and I asked him why it sold for so much, he said he thought it looked pretty good too..... I thought it looked like a hollow core door.

At least it's a sort of brown color so it won't cause too much trouble down in the grain, like that yellow L-door Victrola I sprayed black last year. And I thought I did some bad refinishing jobs.

It does look like deck paint and if it is, it is probably water based and should be easy to remove. The cabinet edges still look sharp so, I dont think he sanded anything. Should be an easy fix.

I saw a piece of rather Renaissance Revival furniture refinished in this manner by a fellow who I know to be a fine and meticulous artisan. Couldn't understand what happened until his family put him in a locked memory care facility. He had been suffering from Alzheimer's Disease for some time but had been doing a pretty good job of "covering". He had apparently forgotten specifics of hos trade, and when pressed to finish the job he had agreed to do a couple years earlier he rather panicked, and sis "something", alas, all that he knew how to do at that point.

Is there possibly some reason for this awful job on your cabinet which we have not considered?

Three months to do a three minute paint job. He must have done some very detailed small strokes. Hopefully it is restorable but the elbow grease you will have to extend to complete it will be great. Good luck. Tom B