Victorian Coat Hook Restoration

A customer found these old coak hooks in their turn of the century Victorian property. The wanted them restored to their original splendour and fitted to a new backing board to match the old one. This Victorian coat hook restoration was a really fun little project!

Watch the full video here:

Restoring a Victorian Coat Hook Rack

I started off by applying solvent paint stripper to all of the hooks. I used a wire brush to clean all the paint off. I used an air die-grinder with a wire brush tip to do final cleaning of the hooks. I could then finally unscrew them from their original board, allowing me to put them in a vice with lead protective strips in the vice jaws to avoid any damage. This allowed me to use the die grinder to clean off any remaining paint and get them looking generally lovely. I used some Brasso to give them a final polish.

I used my jointer / planer / thicknesser to dimension a piece of softwood to match the dimensions of the original backer board – the original board was damaged and not long enough for the new hook location. I used my palm router to chamfer the edges, again carefully matching the chamfer of the original board. The board was given a good sand prior to a coat of primer undercoat and two final coats of Bathroom+ Dulux Emulsion. This is a great paint to use for anything that needs to be very hard wearing, washable and satin finish.

I tried to clean up the original mounting screws but many of them were beyond repair. Luckily I had some blackened new screws that were perfect for the job. I measured out for the hook locations, drilled mounting holes behind two of the hooks, fitted it to the customer’s wall and fitted the remaining hooks to cover the mounting holes. Customer very happy – lovely little project this one!

 

Andy Mac
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