Heywood-Wakefield is a pretty common American brand that does not garnish much following on this site. It is a mid-quality producer, in the vein of Lane or American of Martinsville. The pieces were typically designed in-house, with very few notable designers contributing. There are a few exceptions to this, as G. Rhodes and R. Wright designed for Hey-Wake, but these names are still pretty small time, compared to Eams, Nelson, Saarinen, etal of the American movement.
As with anything, valuation is highly dependent on market, but pieces from these producers are typically on the lower end of valuation in the MCM furniture market. There are a couple of this model table (or very similar to this model) that are in the ebay sold listings, which may be able to give you a slightly better understanding of value, but as a rule, this site does not do valuations.
All things considered, I suspect that there is little return, in paying to have these professionally refinished. If you are able to do the refinishing yourself, there is the possibility of a return for your time, but it is still not a great return. The positives with many of the Hey-Wake pieces is they were solid maple/birch tops, which are forgiving to refinish.
For me personally, these are the types of pieces that I honed my refinishing skills on. If you make a mistake, the penalties are low, and you are not ruining a historic piece of sculpture. If you picked them up for next to nothing, and the refinishing efforts went off without a hitch, you could turn a small profit. The true intent was always practice, however, and any return was a bonus.
One last comment, many of the Hey-Wake pieces have a cream lacquer, or other toned lacquer colors, that were used to finish them. Correctly reproducing these finishes can be very difficult for anyone other than an expert refinisher with a full arsenal of tools and experience.
Gook luck with whichever path you take!
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