furniture problems...

the worst thing is smell....if the furniture is really bad i suggest just leaving it....you can get rid of musty....with all the common ideas, febreeze, charcoal, bleach etc etc...

.. but the really bad smells will be almost impossible...here i mean cat or deep bad barn smells ,medicine smells sometimes....

another thing we avoid, if painting is involved, is furniture with formica tops....not sure how you would ever paint that and make it stick.....

another warning is about sets of chairs...so much can go wrong wtih them...just think of all the joints.... fixing all that on a wobbly set before rehabbing and painting is a huge job...

another really hard repair is broken out hinges.... fixing them can end up really ikky looking as well as possibly weak, where it needs to be strong.... sometimes we take the doors off in that situation...

another really bad thing is the live things...like post beetles..... if you ever see sawdust youve probably got something very bad..we take little holes as a sign of post beetles...and the dust as a sign of live ones....

then theres termites...long hollow trails......and of course cockroaches.....

and then dont forget silverfish...they sometimes turn up in old paper...little and you can almost see thru them...

back to structural problems....basically i try and judge the effort and hassle before starting ....anything is fixable of course....but some things just arent worth the work....i start with the finished price and see if we can get there easily.....i count the time.......