Tips for finding good buys

By The Associated Press

Here are tips from expert furniture refinisher Julia Gray on how to buy furniture at a thrift shop:

- Look for good shape, good proportions and good scale. The object should be worth redoing; keep in mind that something badly done then is still badly done now.

- Avoid pieces with badly chipped veneer, because it is difficult if not impossible to fix.

- If a table is wobbly with loose joints, it likely will need to be taken apart and reclamped and reglued. If you don't have experience doing this, get it done professionally. Try to find out if the piece is warped before you buy because this is hard to correct. One clue is if the piece is bowed somewhere.

- What not to worry about? Missing hardware, dirt, layers of varnish, and worn upholstery which can be replaced.

"Fresh hardware may be all you need, and there are lots of commercial cleaners to remove layers of varnish and dirt," Gray says. "You don't have to go back to bare wood if you will repaint a piece. Just get the top coat off."

But if you think you may have stumbled across an antique, don't strip it, Gray cautions. Destroying the signs of age on a true antique will cut its value drastically. Instead, take a picture and show it to an expert.