Anne Davis

Sometimes chairs wobble because the floor is uneven or because one or more of the legs are loose or because one of the legs is a tiny bit shorter than the rest.  Vintage chairs can be beautiful additions to your home, but may need a little TLC to make up for problems that have cropped up over the years.

I bought a very expensive wooden chair for a song a few years ago because the chair wobbled and nobody wanted to buy it.  My chair had one leg slightly shorter than the rest.  The good news is, there’s a super easy way to fix these problems.

Materials

• Hot glue gun
• Glue Sticks
• Sandpaper
• Screwdriver or drill with screwdriver bits

Is there anything more annoying than a drawer that doesn’t slide open easily? I have a lot of vintage wood furniture that I’ve acquired over the years.  The pieces are beautiful and have lots of character, but the wood tends to swell and shrink making the drawers hard to open and close.

There are several techniques you can use to fix this issue.

1. Reduce the humidity in your home.  Sometimes the simplest fix is to run a dehumidifier to soak up the excess humidity in the air.  The wood then shrinks and the drawers work perfectly.
2. Rub a bar of soap over the edges and sides of the drawers.  This leaves a bit of a residue on the wood that won’t harm it but allows it to glide a bit better.
3. Use waxed paper, paste wax or a candle stick to rub all over the exterior of the drawer.  This leaves a tiny bit of wax on the surface which helps the drawer to move more freely in the opening.
4. If all else fails you can remove some of the wood with sandpaper or a hand planer. Use low grit sandpaper first to take some of the wood off the drawer and then a high grit to smooth the surface out.  If this doesn’t work, you may need to remove even more of the wood using a hand planer.