Ercol Old Colonial Dark To Natural Finish

Old Colonial dark finish to Natural blond' finish

Quite often we will be asked to refinish Ercol furniture from the Old Colonial dark stained colour to the natural or 'blond' colour.

This can be achieved it just requires a little more work. The results can still be spectacular.

There are a few things to understand regarding the darker finish and here's what you need to know.

When any furniture manufacturer creates new pieces the finish is taken into consideration. With Ercol if the item is to be a light or natural finish then they will select the nicer grain features, avoid multiple joins, knots and defects. So naturally to avoid wasting timber they would use the next grade of timber on the darker finishes as they would tend to hide these features. In most cases you wouldn't notice much difference but it's just something to bear in mind. Generally the lighter natural look is far more important than the odd knot or blemish so it shouldn't put you off. At the end of the day, timber is a natural grown product and will have it's own unique grain which is why we love it.

Here is an Ercol 459 occasional coffee table with before and after pictures which shows the kind of features that you can expect, but I think this has definitely been worthwhile as the grain on the top looks lovely. There is a knot on the side rail but that's fine also, so this is a good example of what you could expect to see.