A friend of mine refinished an old butcher block & photographed the process. You can look at it here:
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OMG, this destroyed the piece’s character, IMO. It looked fabulous before–why can’t people leave well enough alone?
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I thought his friend did a great job, but I also understand your point about the character.
Nevertheless, the most important thing is that someone will use this butcher block (instead of just sitting there). If a refurbished block will get people to use it, then it is a positive outcome.
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Of course. Joe’s friend appears to have done an excellent job of refurbishing.
Do you watch Antiques Roadshow? About every 4th episode they feature an article of rare furniture that has been refurbished, causing the value to fall by more than half.
I think the character of these blocks is in visualizing where the butcher stood, which hand held the knife, for all the many years it took to dish the block out. It’s just a shame, IMO, to remove that.
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Funny how we look at things sometimes. The Keno brothers often point out how the value of a piece of furniture is reduced by refinishing. On the other hand you can go look at Meekum Car Auctions where the value of a car is increased many-fold by being refurbished.
For me it depends on how I value the piece. HoyToy’s picture above shows a block which I would say is almost unuseable in it’s current condition. Were I to have the block shown in the refurbish sequence and I wanted to use it as a butcher block I would have done the same. However if I wanted it as a decoration I wouldn’t have refurbished it.
Whatever - I just posted the link because it was relevant to the discussion.
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Actually, I think Hoytoy’s photo shows an eminently useful block. It fails only as a table.
Autos are an interesting analogy. Repainting, and replacing the steering wheel, on Steve McQueen’s '68 Mustang Fastback GT390 from the film Bullitt is probably apt–could you get more money for it? Maybe. Would it destroy the character? Yeah, likely, even if you did a really good job.
