G. Michael's Restoration

G. Michael's Restoration Located in the historic city of Fort Collins, Colorado. G. Michael’s Restoration is an esteemed furniture repair and antique furniture restoration wood shop.

We serve Fort Collins and all Denver metro areas.

Chairs are the hardest thing that comes through our shop, and most people are surprised by that. 🤎Think about it. Every ...
09/07/2026

Chairs are the hardest thing that comes through our shop, and most people are surprised by that. 🤎

Think about it. Every other piece of furniture in your house just sits there holding things. A chair carries a moving person, several times a day, for years. Every joint in it takes that load every single time. So a chair can look completely fine and still be coming apart quietly on the inside.

Here are four chair projects, and four completely different answers.

The outdoor arms. Finish applied by hand with a cloth. Partway through the job you can see the line where the rag has passed, treated wood on one side and untreated an inch away. Slats and curved arms take a sprayed finish unevenly, so this kind of work goes on slowly by hand.

The metal ones. A set of tubular chairs with wooden seats arrived wearing three different colours between them. Grey, faded mint green, beige. Chipped paint and corrosion showing at the joints. They went back out as one matched set in a single blue, with the wood brought back warm and clean. If you sat in a chair like that at school, you'll recognise the shape immediately. 🪑

The lounge chair. Came in dry, faded, and blotchy. Went out deep and warm with the slat back crisp again.

The dining chairs. Ladderback frames taken all the way back to raw pale wood, then finished in a soft off-white and sent on ready for their seats. ✨

Antique or modern, wood or metal, painted or clear. Each chair tells you which one it needs, and the job is knowing how to listen.

Family run in Fort Collins since 1985, serving Northern Colorado and the Denver metro.

Send us a message with a photo at [email protected] for a free quote!

https://gmrestores.com/restoration

Three stages. Three completely different pieces of wood. Same boards the whole time. 🤎This round pedestal top arrived gr...
09/03/2026

Three stages. Three completely different pieces of wood. Same boards the whole time. 🤎

This round pedestal top arrived grey. Not stained grey, just used up, with all the colour gone out of it and no depth left at all. That's what a dining table looks like when the surface finally quits.

Stripped back, it goes pale. Almost cream, with the pencil layout lines still on it and a couple of knots showing. That's what had been under there the entire time.

Then it comes back warm, and the figure in the wood reads properly again. 💪

The finish is worth explaining. It's a 2K polyurethane from Campbell. Two components get mixed and then chemically react with each other to cure. It isn't drying, it's hardening into something new.

You can't buy it in a hardware store and you can't brush it on. It takes a full spray booth and a proper finishing room.

That's not showing off. It's what a dining table needs. Hot plates, spills, homework, elbows, every single day for the next thirty years. ✨

Fort Collins shop. Family run since 1985.

Send us a message at [email protected] with a photo for a quote! 💬

Find out more about table refinishing here: https://gmrestores.com/table-refinishing-and-restoration

Almost everything that comes through the shop gets stripped down to bare wood. This one didn't. 🤎Here's why that matters...
08/31/2026

Almost everything that comes through the shop gets stripped down to bare wood. This one didn't. 🤎

Here's why that matters.

This is a small antique cabinet on a stand. Two burl veneer doors open onto nine little drawers arranged around a center door, each with its own brass k**b. Slide 4 is the reveal if you want to jump ahead.

It came in with real damage. Slide 2 shows a chunk of trim broken clean off the top edge with raw wood underneath. The old finish had crazed into a fine web of cracks and was starting to lift. The doors were covered in scratches and had gone completely flat.

The broken trim got handled first. That's always the order.

Then, instead of stripping it, we saved the finish that was already there and brought it back with French polish. That's shellac, applied by hand with a pad, in very thin layers, over and over. There's no fast version. There's no spray gun version. ✨

On an antique, the original finish is part of its history. Once you strip it off, it's gone for good. Slide 8 is what a hand-rubbed surface looks like up close.

Fort Collins shop. Family run since 1985.

Send us a message at [email protected] with a photo for a quote! 💬

Every finished photo has a boring one behind it. 🔨This is four jobs, shown twice each. The work, then the result. Swipe ...
08/28/2026

Every finished photo has a boring one behind it. 🔨

This is four jobs, shown twice each. The work, then the result. Swipe and you'll see the pattern.

Slide 1 is a hammer, a glue bottle, and a row of small turned spindles laid flat on the bench. That's a gallery rail off an 1894 bookcase. Slide 2 is the bookcase back together.

Slide 3 is the one to zoom in on. A hand and a cloth on an outdoor teak chair, and you can see exactly where the finish has passed and where it hasn't. Two different woods in one photo, same board. Slide 4 is the finished set.

Slide 5 is a bare oak table standing in a row of clamps. That's the stage that decides everything. Slide 6 only looks the way it does because someone was patient here first. 😀

Slide 7 is a door getting checked and fitted on a refinished cabinet, because a door that doesn't sit right ruins the whole piece no matter how good the finish is. Slide 8 is that cabinet done.

Four pieces, four different problems, same order every time. Structure first. Color last. ✨

Fort Collins shop. Family run since 1985.

Send us a message at [email protected] with a photo for a quote! 💬

This piece came with a receipt. 📜There's a handwritten label on the back, under glass, that says this bookcase was made ...
08/26/2026

This piece came with a receipt. 📜

There's a handwritten label on the back, under glass, that says this bookcase was made by Albert Postlewait in February 1894 for B. F. Short, and that the price was six dollars.

Underneath, in pencil, someone added a note in a different hand. "My Mother's handwriting." Signed E. F. Short.

So a son or daughter found their mother's writing on the back of the family bookcase and stopped to say so. That note is probably a hundred years old itself. 🤎

The piece arrived with the finish gone. Blotchy in some places, flaked off in others, and the tabletop bleached out almost gray. But the bones were all there. Original latch. Original hinges. Original glass k**b on the drawer.

The real work was the trim. That spindle gallery across the top is the first thing to go on a piece like this. Little turned parts, tiny joints, and a hundred and thirty years of getting bumped. It came off and went back together on the bench with glue and clamps before anything else happened. 🔨

Then a full refinish that let the oak come back warm instead of trying to make it look new.

Fort Collins shop. Family run since 1985.

Send us a message at [email protected] with a photo for a quote! 💬

#1894

The most important photo in this set is the one with the clamps. 🔨That's this table stripped bare, no color on it yet, h...
08/24/2026

The most important photo in this set is the one with the clamps. 🔨

That's this table stripped bare, no color on it yet, held together while glue does its job. It isn't pretty. It's also the reason the table is still standing. 😊

Some background. This is a long, low oak coffee table built so the top turns down at the corner and continues into the leg as one piece of grain. It looks simple. It is not simple to build and it's less simple to repair.

It came to us dry and faded. The finish on top had worn away almost completely, and once that protection is gone, oak has nowhere to hide. Oak has large open pores, so years of dust, grit, and everyday specks had settled down into the grain and stayed there. There were scratches across the top and a few small chips along the edges. 💪

Before any of the pretty work started, the table needed clamp time. That's the rule in our shop. Wood has to be solid first. A finish will make something look better but it will never make it stronger, and covering up a problem just means somebody deals with it later. 🗜️

Once that was sorted, it was stripped, the grain was cleaned out properly, and it came back in a warm amber tone that lets the oak actually read as oak. The corners stayed sharp, which matters more than people realize on a mitered piece. ✨

Family run in Fort Collins since 1985, serving Northern Colorado and the Denver metro.

Send us a message with a photo at [email protected] for a free quote!

https://gmrestores.com

Three pieces of wood. Three different colors. One table. 🤎Take a look at the before photos. The top sits at one shade, o...
08/21/2026

Three pieces of wood. Three different colors. One table. 🤎

Take a look at the before photos. The top sits at one shade, one drop leaf is clearly lighter and yellower, and the second one landed somewhere between the two. It's not damage exactly. Wood drifts over the years, and leaves that spend most of their life folded down age at a different rate than a top that stays out in the open.

Along with that, the surface had gone flat and hazy, fine scratches ran in every direction, and there were dark marks worked into the top edge where handling had gotten through the finish.

Small tables are fussier than big ones. This one has thin tapered legs, a narrow apron, and two hinged leaves that all have to still work when the job is done. Hardware comes off before anything else starts, repairs get sorted before any color goes near the wood, and the brass goes back on last. ✅

The whole table was stripped and refinished as a single piece rather than in sections. That's the only way to bring a top and two leaves back into agreement. Now the grain reads clearly instead of sitting under a muddy surface, and the brass looks right against it again. ✨

Family run in Fort Collins since 1985, serving Northern Colorado and the Denver metro.

Send us a message with a photo at [email protected] for a free quote!

https://gmrestores.com/wood-furniture-repair/

Same color. Completely different surface. 🤎This set came to our shop in dark already, so nobody was asking us to change ...
08/18/2026

Same color. Completely different surface. 🤎

This set came to our shop in dark already, so nobody was asking us to change the look. The problem was everything sitting on top of the finish.

Swipe to slide 3. Those white rings are where a glass sat too long. The pale splash next to it dried in place. Around all of it, hundreds of fine scratches from years of things being set down, slid across, picked back up.

Dark finishes are brutal that way. They hide nothing. Every ring and every scratch grabs the light and holds it. 🧐

Both tables came apart, got stripped to bare wood, and were refinished from scratch in a deep charcoal. The grain still reads through it, which matters. A dark finish should still look like wood, not like a painted surface.

The hardest part of a set isn't the finish. It's the matching. Two tables have to leave here reading as one piece of furniture, so they get worked side by side, same pace, same conditions, start to finish. ✨

Fort Collins shop. Family run since 1985.

Send us a message at [email protected] with a photo for a quote! 💬

Visit us at https://gmrestores.com

Dark on the outside. Warm on the inside. 🤎This cabinet came into the shop in a light honey finish. Nothing wrong with it...
08/14/2026

Dark on the outside. Warm on the inside. 🤎

This cabinet came into the shop in a light honey finish. Nothing wrong with it structurally. Four glass doors, tight joinery, a heavy crown molding cap. Built well. It just didn't belong in the room anymore.

So the whole thing got stripped and brought back in a deep slate that reads almost black until light hits it, then the blue underneath shows up.

Here's the choice we're proudest of. We kept the interior in its natural cherry. Doors closed, the warm wood glows straight through the glass. Dark frame, lit box. You cannot fake that with paint, because paint covers grain and this piece needed the grain to do the work. 🙂

Refinishing a glass-front piece means every pane and every piece of hardware comes off first. Slower. Also the only way the muntins come out clean. ✨

We run furniture restorations in Fort Collins since 1985.

Send us a message at [email protected] with a photo for a quote! 💬

More details on refinishing: https://gmrestores.com/refinishing-furniture-fort-collins

They call ipe ironwood, and this Jensen set shows why it earned the name 🪵Decades outdoors will leave marks on any wood,...
08/12/2026

They call ipe ironwood, and this Jensen set shows why it earned the name 🪵

Decades outdoors will leave marks on any wood, even one this dense. When this high end outdoor set came into the shop it needed a full reset, so that is what it got.

Every piece was stripped to bare wood. Then came the step most shops never touch: an oxalic acid wash applied hot, at 190 degrees. Done right, it pulls staining out of the wood instead of just fading it. Watching the grain come back to life is honestly the best part of this work ✨

Two chairs, a three seat bench, and a coffee table. Repaired, refinished, and ready for a lot more summers.

Swipe for the before 👉

📩 Have a piece that needs saving? Send us a message at [email protected] with a photo for a quote!

Address

113 Hickory Street
Fort Collins, CO
80524

Opening Hours

Monday 8am - 5pm
Tuesday 8am - 5pm
Wednesday 8am - 5pm
Thursday 8am - 5pm
Friday 8am - 5pm

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