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Furniture Refinishing And Repair
FURNITURE DOCTOR WAS ESTABLISHED IN 1966
We have been chosen as one of the top 100 restoration shops in the United States. Recently, Gary Dymski, "Home & Gardens" editor of Long Island Newsday, featured us in an article.
Click here to read the article.
We offer custom refinishing, expert repairs, restoration, regluing,and on site caning,using first quality supplies. Caning can be returned to you in 3 days or less. We also offer custom table pads. Our shop is equipped to do the safe stripping of furniture, doors, and mouldings. We also do reveneering of furniture and stock most veneers, as well as "on premises" duplication of spindles and turnings.
We feature non-yellowing finishes, shabby chic, pickling, crackle, as well as heat, alcohol, and water resistant finishes. Every piece is expertly color matched.
Over the years, some of our most notable jobs have been as follows:
- The 1932 pipe organ from Radio City Music Hall
- The Dakota Apartment Building in N.Y.C.
- The Long Island Vanderbilt Estate
- Doors, shutters, and kitchen cabinets, in Gracie Mansion
- The fireplace mantles in the N.Y.C. Friars Club.
- And much more!
We are registered with the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, Nassau County Board of Health, and the E.P.A. We also have an on site distiller to reduce the hazardous waste stream, protecting our environment.
Click here for Internet specials.
 The walnut chair, pictured to the right, arrived in deplorable condition," recalls Bob Golub, "but it had belonged to the customer's great grandmother and was of great sentimental value, so we took a look."
"It was made sometime in the late 1800s. Unfortunately, it had been painted white at some point ‑ with latex paint and gold trim ‑ and part of its back leg was missing," explains the owner of Furniture Doctor in Bellmore, N.Y. "And as you can see from the 'before' picture, someone had done a makeshift job of repairing the seat using outdoor furniture webbing!"
To salvage what he could of the delicate spider‑weave seat back, Golub decided to hand‑strip the piece. "We disassembled and rebuilt the frame, which was falling apart from age and abuse," he says. "This involved replacing broken dowels and addressing a bunch of other repairs." He also fashioned the duplicate leg using reclaimed walnut, then completed the restoration with a new cane seat.
"After applying several coats of sealer, we used toners to enhance the beauty of the wood and highlight the carvings. For the finish," he says, "we applied gloss lacquer and then hand polished the piece to a deep luster."
The carvings were a challenge because of their detail, says Golub, "but jobs like this provide my customers ‑ and me with great satisfaction, particularly when the 'before' and 'after' stages show such a drastic change." The fact that the chair was special to the customer was icing on the cake: "She was," he reports proudly, "truly satisfied." ‑ Melissa H. Anderson, The Master's Magic Restoration Gallery, July 1999.
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NEWSDAY – Long Island Thursday, Nov. 7, 2002 * Nassau Edition
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Home & Gardens
www.newsday.com
Nicked table leg, gouged cabinet, and furniture begging to be refinished.
Meet Bob Golub, “The Furniture Doctor.” Bob Golub is a craftsman who can make your sick furniture look and feel good again. Over the years, relocation, kids, pets, and careless houseguests can wear and tear at wood furniture and other décor items. Instead of putting them to the curb, you may be able to have them rescued by experts like Bob Golub.
You’ll find Bob Golub in the Yellow Pages under furniture repair or antiques and he even offers home visits for sick furniture.
For Golub, whose shop is on Sunrise Highway in Bellmore, “it’s been restore, refinish, and repair for over 40 years,” he says. Mostly, it’s wood furniture, especially wobbly chairs.
Bob Golub says, “I am strictly furniture.” He was turned on to fixing damaged and neglected furniture while selling furniture for his father-in-law. Watching craftsman restore damaged furniture was intriguing.
Bob Golub often encounters a common problem: gently dissuading customers from putting good money into bad furniture. Bob suggests getting a couple of opinions before refinishing or repairing an old or sentimental piece.
”I turn away a lot of work,” Bob says. “People will come in and tell me the piece has sentimental value, so they want to repair or refinish it. You have to be careful not to hurt a customer’s feelings. I tell them, “sentimental value is one thing, but it’s just not worth it.”
”If it’s 100 years old, it’s an antique, if it’s 75 years old, it’s a ‘cheater’s antique,’ and if it is 50 years old, it’s just old stuff,” says Bob Golub.
Chair repair and refinishing are among the most common repairs. Customers also seek chair caning.which he does on premises.
Bob Golub can provide price ranges for several repairs, including caning, from $54 a chair, and regluing, from about $65 Woodturning depends on size, shape, and wood species.
Bob Golub offers only machine caning, in which a sheet of prewoven caning material is fitted into the chair seat, much like a screen is fitted into an aluminum window frame.
”We can convert a hand-caned chair to a machine cane, and that’s common because it’s less expensive to machine cane, but once it has been converted to a machine cane, it can not be converted back to the hand caning.”
Every so often, Golub, encounters grander assignments. He’s been called to work at the Vanderbilt Mansion and has refinished the wood on the Wurlitzer organ at the Radio City Music Hall, but Golub caters mainly to more common requests. Golub takes in a set of broken dresser drawers, or collects backs and seats for machine caning. Simple work, perhaps, but work that is very much in demand.
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