Furniture restoration & refinishing · Grand Rapids since 2006
We bring tired furniture back to the table.
Gostar Restoration is a small West Michigan shop that strips, re-glues, re-canes and refinishes the pieces your family actually uses — not museum relics behind glass, but the dresser in the hall and the chairs you sit in every night.
What a drop-off looks like
Honest wood, a finish that lasts, and a straight answer first.
Grand Rapids used to be called Furniture City for a reason. We like keeping a little of that alive — one chair, one sideboard, one water-ringed tabletop at a time.
Most pieces come to us in one of three states: loose and wobbly, worn down to bare patches, or “someone in the family already tried to fix it.” We re-glue joinery the slow way with hide or PVA glue depending on the piece, fill and level what needs it, and build the finish up by hand so the grain still reads. No thick plastic topcoat that hides the wood.
And if a piece honestly isn’t worth the cost of a full restoration, we’ll tell you that before you spend a dollar. We’d rather do one job right than talk you into three.
On the bench
What we do, and roughly what it runs.
Prices below are starting points for a typical piece in sound condition. Veneer loss, old repairs and hidden damage move the number — which is why we quote in person.
Strip & refinish
Chemical stripping, grain-filling where needed, stain match, then a hand-rubbed oil, shellac or conversion-varnish topcoat.
From $385 / piece
Antique repair & joinery
Re-gluing loose chairs, replacing broken rails and stretchers, dutchman patches, veneer re-lay and blister repair.
From $75 / repair
Hand-caning & seat weaving
Hand-woven cane, pressed-cane spline, Danish cord, rush and splint seats on chairs, rockers and settees.
Hand-cane from $0.95 / hole
French polish & touch-up
Traditional shellac French polish on fine pieces, plus in-home touch-up and color-matching for dings and heat marks.
Quoted per piece
Why people drive across town
We fix the piece in front of us, not the one in the catalog.
Every job starts the same way: we set the piece on the bench, look underneath, and figure out what it’s made of and how it was built. A 1940s mahogany dining set gets treated differently than a flat-pack dresser from last year — and sometimes the kind thing to say is “this one isn’t worth refinishing, but we can make it solid again for a lot less.”
On painted pieces made before 1978 we work lead-safe under the EPA’s Renovation, Repair and Painting rule. It slows us down a little. We think that’s the right trade.
From the shop floor
A few pieces that left happier than they arrived.
What folks say
Mostly grandmothers’ furniture. No pressure to rush it.
“I brought in my grandmother’s walnut secretary expecting bad news. Arman walked me through what it needed, what it didn’t, and it came back looking like the day she bought it.”
“Four pressed-back chairs, all with blown-out cane seats. Pat re-caned every one by hand and they’re tighter than anything we could buy new.”
“They talked me out of a full refinish on a table that just needed its top redone. Saved me a few hundred dollars. That’s why I’ll keep going back.”
Ready when you are
Got a piece with a story? Let’s take a look at it.
Send a couple of photos or just stop by the bench on Godfrey Avenue. Estimates are free, and we’ll give you the honest number — even when it’s “don’t bother.”