Inspiration

Oscar Wilde once wrote: “there’s only one thing worse than being talked about, and that’s not being talked about”. At Upholstery Solutions, we take it as a compliment when people talk about us. We’d be disappointed if they didn’t. Word-of-mouth from happy customers is how we get a lot of our bespoke furniture and reupholstery business.

Recently, we had a client come to us from East Village, in Waterloo, Sydney. She heard about us through an artistic friend that we’d done work for some months earlier.

A home consultation was arranged to discuss the refurbishment and reupholstery of two vintage chairs. Timing was of paramount importance as pickup and delivery had to work around an upcoming holiday. The client wanted everything organised and picked up before she left, and ready for delivery when she returned.

The brief - Danish chair revival

It was the clients intention to find and then transform some stylish but also apartment friendly furniture items. Then she found two original Danish chairs, circa 1960 in a vintage furniture store in Redfern, Sydney. The Danish chairs were a wonderful find, but they were in need of reupholstery and restoration.

The chairs were upholstered in gold velvet, which was badly worn and not authentic to style. The padding on both chairs was lumpy and disintegrating in places. To top it off, the chairs were also quite unstable and in need of structural repairs.

The first step was a home consultation - what we call a ‘creative session’ - where clients let their imagination run wild with creative possibilities. For this client, we came and visited with a range of hand-picked fabric samples and offered some design guidance.

The client settled on the felted green wool, which the material these chairs would of originally been upholstered with. Felted wool is widely used in Scandinavian furniture. The creative session proved to be very important for the client as it allowed her to make key decisions before embarking on her holiday.

Craftsmanship - Traditional furniture reupholstery

With the chairs collected from the East Village apartment, it was back to our Sydney factory to expose some history. Firstly, there was the removal of all old upholstery and padding. Then with the frame stripped back, a thorough structural inspection was carried out.

It was discovered that the dowel joints in the chair legs were extremely worn and had to be replaced. The legs were then re-dowelled and structurally glued. This is a process that can take several days as the frame must be allowed to set properly.

For the suspension and padding, we used a high performance foam on the seat with a feather down wrapped cushion on the back. Feather down may seem like an unusual choice but in this situation it provides optimum comfort and gives the chair a soft lush texture.

To reupholster Danish wing chairs is a tricky task. The previous gold upholstery had been poorly done. So our master upholsterers went with a more traditional method: hand-stitching the arm upholstery to the wing upholstery.

Result - Another happy customer

The client arrived back from her holiday very relaxed and was able to kick back in her newly refurbished Danish chairs. She is delighted with the results and has promised to tell her friends!

Are you looking for a Sydney Upholsterer? Ask around. You’ll find our current reviews and ratings on Google and Facebook. You can also contact us to arrange a Creative Session at your home or office.