Brendan Carpenter, Custom Furniture and Refinishing

Brendan Carpenter, Custom Furniture and Refinishing We custom build, restore and refinish fine furniture and cabinetry. Building and restoring fine furniture.

08/10/2026

Water rings, a worn-through top, and a base nobody would have looked at twice.

Last week I showed you this little drop-leaf before I started — pulled out of a garage and about one bad decision away from the curb. I told you the plan: dark walnut on the top to bring the grain back, soft blue on the base.

Here's how it landed. The top is where the whole piece lives now — that grain was under there the entire time.

So tell me: leaves up as a full round table, or leaves down against a wall?

📍 Greenville | Upstate SC

08/07/2026

Nobody tore out a single cabinet in this video.

Every kitchen and vanity here is the original box, the original layout, the original doors — sprayed to a factory-smooth finish in place. New hardware, new color, same footprint. It's a fraction of a full replacement and it's done in days, not months.

Which one would you pick for your own kitchen — the warm white or the soft gray?

Greenville / Upstate SC

Gouged, chipped, and hazed over — this mahogany corner had taken eighty years of chairs getting shoved into it. The fini...
08/06/2026

Gouged, chipped, and hazed over — this mahogany corner had taken eighty years of chairs getting shoved into it. The finish gave up a long time ago.

Stripped it back, rebuilt the edge, and let the grain do the talking.

Same table. What do you think did that much damage to the corner?

08/05/2026

Three times I sanded this top back to nothing.

Mahogany is open-grained. Left alone, light falls into every one of those pores and the top reads dull no matter how many coats you put on it. The only way to get glass is to fill it — coat, cure, sand it flat, coat again, over and over until the pores are level with the wood and there's nothing left for the light to fall into.

Twice I got close and it wasn't right, so it came back off. The third build is the one you're looking at. The rest of the desk is original mahogany brought back to depth instead of buried under new color.

Home office or working office — where does this one belong?

Greenville · Upstate SC

08/04/2026

It's been sitting in somebody's garage for years, not being
used by anyone.

Little drop-leaf coffee table — the leaves fold right down.
I've got it stripped, and by the end of the week the top
will be dark walnut with the grain showing through, and the
base will be a soft light blue.

Then it goes back in their living room where it belongs.

Walnut top with a painted blue base — would you do it, or
keep the whole thing wood? Tell me 1 or 2.

Greenville / Upstate SC


08/03/2026

The sun had been eating this front door for years.

Most people would have ripped it out and bought a new one.
Instead we stripped it down to bare wood right there on the
porch — no removing it, no plywood over the opening, no
sawdust in the house. Same door her family has walked
through for twenty years, just finished the way it was
meant to look.

Would you have refinished this one, or replaced it?

Greenville / Upstate SC — on-site door refinishing.


07/31/2026

Same doors. Same house. Forty minutes of watching and you still won't believe it's the same wood.

They'd gone gray and chalky from years of sun — the kind of thing people replace instead of repair. Stripped to bare, grain brought back up, stained and sealed. The mahogany was under there the whole time.

Would you have refinished these, or ordered new doors?

Greenville · Upstate SC

We are stripping these doors today... Why did no one tell me it was gunna be a we bitwarm??🤪
07/30/2026

We are stripping these doors today...

Why did no one tell me it was gunna be a we bitwarm??

🤪

07/29/2026

Slightly darker — matched to the original. Back to what it looked like when it was built.

This English chest of drawers dates to the early 1800s. It was restored once before, a long time ago. Earlier this week it was stripped to bare wood with two hundred years of damage showing.

Hand-cut dovetails. Bow front. Original brasses cleaned and back on. Same piece, same wood, just given its turn again.

Would you have gone darker, or kept it natural?

Greenville / Upstate SC

07/28/2026

Severe scratches. Cloudy, worn-out, because the problem isn't on top of the finish — it IS the finish.

So we took it all the way back. Stripped it, worked the surface down until every scratch was gone, and built a fresh finish back up from bare wood.

That last shot is the table home again, back in the dining room where it belongs. Same table. Just given another few decades.

This is the part I love — these pieces don't need replacing. They need somebody willing to do the work.

What's the piece in your house that everybody eats around? Tell me about it below.

Address

Wellford, SC

Opening Hours

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

Telephone

(864) 373-1759

Website

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