Here is a pair of arm chairs we did a short while ago. They were still covered in the original fabric, which was at one point a light mint green & gold. The green had faded away, and the fabric was quite worn. In addition, the client wanted the wood refinished.

Before:

Once the frames were stripped and sanded, the client decided that she liked the frames as-is, with just a clear coat.

Here’s one of the only “in-between” photos I took. It shows a mostly finished chair, with new webbing on the curved back for strength.

The original seat cushion padding was quite poor (a mix of shredded foam and cotton bits), and we replaced those with new foam.

NOTE: From a distance, the camera gives the fabric a really odd look because of the tight pattern (a basket weave in black and beige). For better photos of what the fabric looks like, scroll down to the photos of the individual chair.

This is another of our “Extreme Restorations”. It took nearly a month on and off for us to finish it, and involved a lot of different work done to it, including a new feather pillow casing, frame repairs, and a complete overhaul on all the interior components.

You don’t need to be an expert upholsterer to see that this sofa was very poorly done by the last person who worked on it. Just looking at it from the front, you can see that the front edge under the pillow wasn’t attached properly to the stuffing/edge, then there is the terrible job on the arms, with about 100 pleats and creases around the ill-fitting front arm caps.

The upper back edge was incredibly crooked.

You can also see how very lumpy the arms appeared along the bottom edge.

The first step was to remove all the fabric. Thankfully this was the only layer on the sofa. Here you can see the cotton padding, and you can also see that the front edge was not attached (tied) properly. It’s much tighter in the centre, and much too loose around the front curves.

Here, all the stuffing has been removed and set aside. It was mainly Spanish Moss (or “black fibre”), with a lovely coat of black horsehair on the top layer (just under the cotton).

Although the springs were correctly tied with an 8 way hand tie pattern, the entire thing was a complete mess with several additional cords, and we decided to get rid of all this and start fresh. It was not easy to remove all these ropes and knots from the springs.

Detail:

Likewise, the back springs had TWO burlap covers, hand tied TWICE, which had to be removed. While the ties on the back springs were still technically good, the burlap and webbing they sat on, needed to be replaced, so these also got re-tied.

There were a few places on the frame that needed to be repaired, and a few botch jobs needed to be fixed, such as this lower arm rail which was over half an inch out of place. We also puttied and filled all the holes in the frame to get a good base for the new upholstery.

Frame repaired, puttied, new bottom webbing installed (photo farther down), and springs re-installed and re-strung.

Burlap in place.

Original hand stuffed edge roll re-attached. Notice here, and in the previous photo, that the front edge is now a good, uniform height when compared with the photos earlier.

New (and very densely woven) webbing on the bottom.

A few things to note in the following photo. First: We normally don’t use a mismatched fabric on the deck (the solid navy blue), however, we were working with a fabric supplied by our client, and we were really not sure if we would have enough for the whole sofa, so we used a coordinating blue here instead. The seat cushion will cover this, and it won’t be visible, but we usually prefer to use the same fabric everywhere. Second: If it’s not totally clear, the sofa is lying on its back in this photo. Third: The back springs don’t get much pressure or tension, so they only get a 4-way tie instead of an 8-way (which would be overkill).

Detail:

Backrest springs covered in burlap.

Here’s a quick shot of the underside, showing the black bottom fabric, held in place with tacks (which we use on our antique pieces).

With the main sofa body done, we turned our attention to the cushion. As you can see here, as well as in the original photos, at some point the cushion was redone, and they made it too short by about 2 or 3 inches. This left an unsightly gap on the edges.

This meant that unfortunately, we would need to remake and re-stuff the down-filled cushion.

If you have ever seen a movie with a pillow fight in it, with feathers flying in every direction, you can’t really appreciate the sheer mess this would create in your home. It’s almost unimaginable. If the pillow is a fairly high quality one (like the one in this sofa), the filling will have a lot of down in it, and the down is tiny and as light as air. It will get EVERYWHERE, and coat every surface it touches (including walls).

In most cases, when it comes to feather and down cushions, we just need to make a new down-proof “extra” slipcover over the old pillow to help contain any leaks, but in the case of this particular pillow, that wasn’t going to work.

Here is the new pillow casing (with baffles*) on the left, and the existing old pillow on the right, which had to have its feathery innards transferred to the new casing.

*Baffles are internal dividers which help to keep the pillow rectangular, and also to help keep the feathers/down evenly distributed inside. The old pillow did not have baffles.

This is a shot of me right after we had gotten all the feathers into the new casing. Note all the thousands of tiny little feathery bits floating in the air.

It got everywhere. In my eyebrows, eye lashes, hair, sweater, shoes, under the tables, all over the floor, everywhere. We vacuumed about 5 times during the day, and still found feathers weeks later.

This was Pierre right after he sewed the pillow casing shut, and just before we started to clean up.

So there we are, after all this work, with a beautiful and completely overhauled sofa, ready for years more service. You will also note that the skirts had been covering-up some beautiful carved mahogany feet. There also used to be a rounded band of mahogany that went along the bottom, and curved up the arms, but part of it had been removed and thrown away. We left the remaining bottom band in place (you can see it earlier) but covered it with fabric.

We also re-trimmed the arm caps to better fit the arms and give a nicer, cleaner appearance. I think the finished sofa is stunning!

I did not get a photo of the back (nothing too exciting to see), but here you can see the rear feet, which have a nice little curve to them.

Here we have a lovely old Victorian “slipper chair”. This type of chair is called a slipper chair, because the overall shape of the chair resembles a lady’s slipper. Generally they have short legs, sitting close to the ground, and have no arms.

This particular chair dates from the late 1800’s (probably around 1880-1890), and has some lovely carved roses, and French Provincial style legs.

The frame on this chair was in in TERRIBLE shape. This was one of those chairs where most of it was being held together by the upholstery. We worked on the chair on/off for nearly the entire month of January, since it needed lots of small pieces repaired in stages, each one being left to dry for a day.

Before:

The brown velvet was old, but not original.

Some of the breaks:

The bottom straps had been doubled-up instead of replaced.

The original hand-stitched burlap stuffing/edge roll around the perimeter. This was saved, and a new burlap was re-stitched over it to keep everything together, original, and strong.

The back hoop needed the most work, with 7 or 8 areas/joints that needed repairs. These were complicated repairs as well, because of all the odd angles.

One of the sides being glued:

The repaired frame. We had to make 2 new blocks to fit around the back legs (it had some but they were badly damaged and not worth repairing), and we also had to make a repair to the back centre support.

New and densely woven webbing:

Springs re-attached (5) and hand tied:

Burlap cover:

Unfortunately, Pierre took over the rest of the upholstery on the piece, so I don’t have other “in between” photos. After the burlap, the original stuffing (layers of straw, horsehair, and cotton) was re-applied, a rough cover installed, then the re-stitched back panel & padding, followed by the new upholstery.

Here’s the finished chair:

Here is a lovely old wing chair. This is the smallest wing chair I’ve seen so far. It’s not so small that I would call it a child’s size, but it’s smaller than an average one. This one had a nice solid frame, and the original horsehair stuffing on most of the chair (which was retained).

The chair had been previously redone, and this is how it looked when we got it.

A bit hard to tell here, but the back was bowed outwards due to worn webbing from the back springs.

The bottom had been doubled-up to help stiffen it without actually repairing it (by a previous upholsterer). All of this was removed, and new webbing was installed.

Under the top layer, and some added padding, we found the original fabric, which was a thin printed material almost like a silk.

The seat had a remnant of a bright yellow tag, but we don’t know what company made this chair.

Original fabric removed, and some of the worn horsehair “rough covers” removed (to be replaced):

Deck and front roll removed. The spring ties were still in very good shape, so we only had to redo the webbing. Sadly I forgot to take a photo of that step.

Back (before changing the webbing):

New burlap on the deck, and reattached/re-stitched edge roll:

New back webbing:

Deck padding and new “rough cover”:

The finished upholstery (a nice red toile) being applied. You can see the rest of the rough covers.

Here’s the finished chair. I should note that this wing chair has a lovely high quality down seat cushion.

This month, we’re having a 20% off sale on all our high quality and designer fabrics. We have thousands of choices available, and now is a good time to take advantage of this great offer!

Here’s another “Ugly Duckling” transformation. The owner himself referred to this one as “the ugly chair” while we were discussing several of his projects. This is the same owner with all the other white chairs and striped blue chairs (and a few others) shown previously.

The chair has been reupholstered at least once or twice previously (this current beige floral and remnants of a dark forest green were found), and the last person who worked on it did a truly poor job. Some of the work is not too bad, but the back of the chair really looks terrible. It has ribbed piping, which is just loose (and crooked).

We were given some artistic freedom with the chair, so hopefully he’ll love it, and so will you.

Before:

Lumpy and awful.

Here you can see how the back panel is bowed outwards. This is not to do with the upholstery job, but rather due to the worn back webbing that holds the springs in place.

An attempt to strengthen and stiffen the bottom with metal straps (not the best idea, since the webbing is supposed to flex).

The metal straps were removed, and the webbing was replaced.

The webbing for the back springs was also replaced.

The rest of the upholstery (spring ties, stuffing, etc) was in good shape, and we just changed the burlap.

Here’s what we came up with. The chair originally had this sort of ribbed/pillow back. It may or may not have had buttons, but we decided to add just 3 for a bit of detail. The front arm facings were replaced (they were a touch too big).

The legs were in wonderful shape, and they did not need refinishing, or even waxing. We did just one or two tiny spot touch-ups.

I was quite surprised that 2 more of these chairs dropped into our shop for re-upholstery. If you remember back in September, we worked on two identical chairs, which were refinished in a dark brown, and got an interesting brown & blue fabric over them. You can see those here: http://lefebvreupholstery.blogspot.ca/2013/09/pair-of-arm-chairs-modern-grey.html.

These two chairs were in similar (poor) condition. The owners wanted new (foam) stuffing, and we had to completely repair the frames. The owner also needed a colour and pattern that would match with her other pieces, so after a lot of back-and-forth between several options, she chose this nice orangey-brown patterned fabric, which matches well with the Birch frames, as well as with her existing sofa, etc.

Before:

Note the back, which is all lumpy, since the last person changed the chairs from having a ribbed back to a plain back. They didn’t add enough stuffing to properly even-out everything.

While dis-assembling the chairs, we found an interesting repair, using an old box of Bostich staples. We had a similar box on hand.

The old stuffing on these (as with the previous pair) was mostly straw, with some cotton.

One of the two chairs disassembled.

Reassembled:

New webbing and burlap.

New foam and Terylene:

The original “tubes” of cotton stuffing for the back ribs were still there, and we reused them with some fresh cotton added where needed. The ribbed backs with the accent buttons (as it was done originally) really adds a lot of nice detail to these chairs.

Here they are, all done, and ready for many more years of service.

Here’s a “blah” to “eye-catching” transformation. The owner of this chair wanted a new fabric to better match her colour scheme. The chair was still fairly new, so it needed no repairs, other than a few touch-ups to the wooden legs.

Before:

After!

Notice that all the stripes match-up. They continue from the tops of the arms down the side panels, and they are matched on the back, pillow, and front (as well as down the back panel).

I like the curved bottom rails on the sides (a nice detail not used often enough on chairs).

Here is a fairly typical La-Z-Boy recliner. The chair was in very good shape, and the owner wanted to refresh it with a new colour.

During our reupholstering, we also changed the seat foam.

Before:

After:

We’re back! It’s been an entire month with no updates, but that doesn’t mean things have been quiet at the shop. I will be updating this week with all the projects from January, which included at least 8 pieces, plus several other small jobs (pillows, and other small repair jobs).

Along with a bunch of new projects comes a newly designed website (our main company website), and a new matching layout to this “sister” photo-blog. Visit our main company website here: http://lefebvresupholstery.com/site/ and please don’t hesitate to leave us some comments!

This first chair is a project we had started before the Christmas holidays. We finished it in early January. The chair needed to have the front legs and side rails reglued, the legs refinished, and the entire chair reupholstered.

Here are the before photos (notice the very lumpy seat, the incorrect seat edge, and a torn-off skirt):

Notice the missing front casters, and the resulting downward slope of the chair.

A fairly amateur job on the rear of the chair.

At some point, the bottom of the chair caved-in, and rather than have the chair re-webbed, they repaired it with a sheet of plywood.

The original webbing, and the burlap cover(s) were toast. Note remnants of a beautiful brilliant red-orange velvet.

The coils, spring ties, burlap, and stuffing on the back of the chair were still in very good shape, so we only replaced the webbing there.

Stripped chair before disassembling the lower frame (legs & side rails) for repairs & refinishing.

Frame reassembled, legs refinished, re-webbed, with springs attached.

8-way hand tie.

First burlap cover.

Original “first stuffing” and edge roll.

The first stuffing covered with new burlap, hand stitched in place, with bridle ties.

Not shown: original horsehair reapplied, with fresh cotton, and a muslin cover, followed by the new upholstery.

Here is the finished chair, complete with new (replacement) casters.

The previous stain & finish on the legs was a ruddy brick red pigment stain with shellac. The owner wanted a nice deep walnut colour, which turned out looking very nice over the beautiful Elm legs.

Here’s a detail that shows the original red-orange velvet. The chair would have been quite eye-catching originally. I absolutely love this shade of red.