Neglected, water damaged, forgotten about. For too long this side table at outside wasting away, well, cometh the hour, cometh the heat bendable wooden mouldings. Created by one of our brand ambassadors, Heike’s Furniture Art, this table was put to one side and forgotten about, much like mouldings of inferior quality. Mouldings that can’t be drilled, sanded, shaved, distressed, stained and then bent when warm.

Anyway, I digress.

This water damaged table was just dying to be rescued. First up on the rescue mission, was to prep it. It was thoroughly washed, dried and two coats of Dixie Belle’s BOSS would hopefully begin to alleviate the damage and lay the foundation for some furniture salvation. The original trim however, was unsalvageable, it was time to remove the limb to save the body. Luckily there’s a plethora of WoodUbend trim mouldings to choose from. The ornate TR124 seemed like the perfect choice for this operation.

With the original chipboard exposed, the likelihood was that it was going to absorb a lot of glue. With this in mind, I liberally applied my good quality, flexible wood glue to both the trim and the table. As I was dealing with a difficult surface I – unusually – opted to hold the trim down with tape. I generally like to avoid tape as often I find it’s better to hold your mouldings in place as the glue gets to work. As a general rule of thumb, if you’re using tape, after 10/15 minutes you’ll be okay to take it off.

The trim wasn’t a perfect fit and did overhang a little, as WoodUbend mouldings can be shaved and even sliced when warm I could have cut the moulding back, I decided against this as I didn’t want to lose any of the intricate design.

Once the trim was in place I overlapped the two ends a little in order to hide the join in the design, here’s how:

• overlap the two ends of the trim
• ensure both sides are warm
• find somewhere where you can hide the join
• slice around the pattern and match the shape where the two ends will meet
• Add a little more glue, warm and hey presto the trim is one piece and the join is invisible

With the trim in placed and the rescue mission well underway, it was time to turn my attention to the feet. Being ambitious, I really wanted to push one of the thicker mouldings to its limit. I wanted to see how far we could bend it.

This was going to take a good blast with the heat gun and some serious gluing – it’s worth noting that if you are using a heat gun it’s important to keep it moving in order to avoid scorching your mouldings.

I chose the X1008 droplet moulding and got to bending. With a bit of persuasion the moulding sat into place, perfectly bending around the contours of the original design. This design had three feet and one of the mouldings was proving particularly troublesome. No bother though, as with all well planned rescue mission – I had come with the correct equipment.

The moulding could have been heated and bent even further to the table, but at the risk of breaking it I abandoned the task and reached for my Dixie Mud. In and amongst other uses, Dixie Mud is brilliant in situations where you want a wood filler. Bridging the gap between the moulding and the table the Dixie Mud dries super quickly and after a little sanding it was as the moulding had always been there.

Once the three mouldings were down, I heated each one up and sliced off where the ‘ears’ of the design overhung and sanded these edges down too. A quick two minute job but it added so much more to the look of the design.

An ornate trim and three mouldings bent and shaped to the feet of the table it was time to think about breathing some more life into the table. It was time to paint.

What’s a rescue mission without a little drama? I thought it would be a good idea to experiment a little with the colours, picking two that don’t historically go together. Dixie Belle’s dark Caviar, combined with the much lighter, whimsical Lucky Lavender. First up I needed to map the colours out and chose the stand as the best place to begin. As I was working with a smaller surface, when it came to blending later down the line I would need a smaller brush as I would be trying to avoid getting too much paint on the surface. For now though, I was in planning mode and just working through where each colour would go.

So, first coat down, on the stand at least. It was time to let that dry and take my mouldings off of the griddle – which I like to keep at a toasty 80°C. I wanted to add some trim in the space between each feet, it’s often little touches like these which really elevate a piece. When using WoodUbend trims, it’s always worth keeping them in the coil that they come in and only cutting off as much as you need, this will help retain the heat and if the trim unravels, cools and hardens it can become seriously unruly. If you cut off too little, not an issue, just keep the trim warm and it’ll stretch.

Once the TR124 was in place and cooled, I took some sandpaper and shaped either ends of the trim, blending it into the table – just to give it a more subtle look.

I also wanted to add the same elegant X1008 mouldings to the drawers which sat underneath the table top and screw in diamante drawer handles, because – why not? However with the mouldings stuck on front of the drawer, the screws on the handles didn’t reach out of the other side enough to be able to fix in place. This presented itself as an opportune moment to show how you can drill WoodUbend mouldings, find out how I managed to fit the handles below.

The rescue mission was in full swing – and I was winning.

Reaching back for my smaller paint brush (remember, small surface) I continued playing with the contrasting colours of Caviar and Lucky Lavender, the resulting blended colour was a deep, purple. I was happy. The dark colours blending into the light was a motif I kept running throughout this whole piece.

Using a chip brush on the mouldings I made sure to get the Caviar into all of the mouldings, next I dry brushed with the Lucky Lavender over the top and this really gave the mouldings depth. Really highlighted how ornate they were.

The rescue was nearly complete. We weren’t out of the woods just yet, nearly but not yet. The piece needed something else, something to just make it pop.

A WoodUmandala stencil design.

Using the Lucky Lavender against the darker, blended purple the stencil design added that perfect touch of style. I used in intermittently along the drawers with my drilled mouldings and opted for a whole design on the table top.

There it was.

Rescued from the brink of disaster with WoodUbend mouldings and some help from Dixie Belle.