I found this piece in a come and get it Facebook group. I swapped in for 2 bottles of wine. I fell in love with it's prettiness. It was in a sorry state. There was damage to the frame and springs hanging out of the bottom. My general rule is that if it's a quality piece of furniture in decent condition I don't touch it, and I definitely don't paint the frame. But this had so much damage to the frame that it needed painting. The thing is that it had some beautiful details and it really was worth saving. It still is the biggest rebuild I've ever done. It literally fell apart as I was stripping it.
It'd had some dodgy repairs done to it.But to be honest I see that A LOT. There are ways to repair webbing without rebuilding a seat of a chair or just putting it over the top. If you do the repairs properly then you'll save yourself a lot of money in the long run.
As you can see from this video, once I'd stripped in down I literally had a pile of pieces. Some wood glue and some clamps work a treat though. Unless you really need to, DON'T put screws in everywhere. It's just not necessary and it looks messy (seriously please don't). If you really think it needs it or you know it's going to get high usage put a right angle bracket on the inside of the frame.
Because the carving on the frame was so pretty I decided to repair the chipped scroll. It was a woodworking friend that told me how to do this. I found a piece of dowel the right diameter and cut it at the right angle to fit. I glued it in place and used wood filler to blend the joint. If you wanted to leave the wood in it's natural state you could use dowel in the same wood type and sand the existing wood to match. This also had some light woodworm damage which I filled and damage from badly placed tacks.
When I stripped the back off the chair I found that originally it would have had a solid fan shaped panel down the centre. It must have gotten broken at some point and someone had upholstered over the then empty back. I decided to try and replace it something that looked more in keeping and as close to the original look as possible. In the end I came to the conclusion that this ribbed dowel looked right. But as a result of the bodged backing there was a lot of damage from tacks, which I lovingly filled. once it was painted up it did look right.
Next came the complete rebuild of the seat. I started off with a completely blank frame. So webbing, springs, stuffing and stitched edge (click the image below to scroll though and see the different stages). The gap between strips of webbing should be less than 3 cm and A chair this small only needs three small springs. To prevent damaging the paint work its best the wait until you are down to final stuffings to paint the frame, that way you don't risk getting paint on the final fabric and you limit the opportunity to damage the paint work while working on it
For this frame I used a dark grey chalk paint and then worked a black wax into it. It created this beautiful patina on the woodwork and brought out all the detailing on the carving. The right choice of wax applied with a brush rather than a cloth in all the twiddly bits (technical term, obviously) can do wonders.
Last job was to choose the right fabric and edging. Although you really want to choose all that right at the beginning. Evaluate your piece, what style is it? Does the frame have a lot of damage or could you leave it unpainted? What colours would go in with the current decor or are in fashion? Will it get a lot of use or is it purely decorative? Four useful questions.
For me this was my first piece I was doing to sell on. So I chose to focus on what was fashionable and because it was such a small chair, I made it decorative. My signature style is a pop of colour and the way I use it. So I went with teal textured velvet, mustard edging and charcoal woodwork. The mustard breaks up the charcoal and teal which other wise would have been too similar in tone. Now as easy way to tell if two colours are similar in tone in squint and if they blur into one another they're close or the same tone. This is the final product and I have to admit I wish I'd never sold it. I used this piece as a demonstration piece for an upholstery course and by the end of the course it had sold. It was beautiful. Luckily I've gotten better at photographing my work since I took these.....
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