Expert: Mark H. Miller - 3/9/2008

Question
Mark,
Just found your site and am very impressed.  
I want to recover my dining room chairs - they are armless, with square seats.  Each chair is finish with dozens of brads.  The chairs are 100 years old and I'm want to remove the brads without harming the wood so I can refinish the chairs.  How do I get the brads off? CAREFULLY??

Thank you for your time.

Pat

Answer
Hi Pat.

Only remove the brass nails if you plan on reupholstering the chairs, if you do not plan on reupholstering the chairs then cover the fabric with plastic and the nails with masking tape and then refinish.

If you plan on reupholstering then remove the brass nails but not the fabric,  refinish the chairs with the fabric still in place, the reason for that is that underneath the fabric there are very dusty materials which will make the refinishing very difficult.  In upholstery shops if something needs refinishing it is done with the fabric in place which is stripped off after the refinishing.

There is a special tool for removing brass nails, it is called a brass nail puller, or brass nail remover, it looks like a screw driver except that the tip is split, sort of like very small crow bar.  When you remove the nails some will break so don't plan on reusing them.

Brass nail removers are available from the many sites on line that sell upholstery supplies.

I hope this information is what you were looking for,  please do not hesitate to contact me if I can be of further help.

Thanks for the compliment.

Mark Miller.