Projects at HomeRefurbers.com

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A Bit of Upholstery for a small paycheck

MarkTheFiddler — Sun, 16 Jun 2013 03:31:47 GMT

My beloved wife has a beloved friend who can make best dang coconut merengue pie in this wide world. Well it’s the best I ever had. She also made us a banana cream pie. The two ladies made this little deal. We get pies and I pick up her chairs to upholster.

When I saw the chairs, my heart sank. I can upholster an entire sofa in the time it takes to do the easier of these chairs. I could have done 2 more couches in the time it took me to do the harder one. They are just that difficult to strip and require very slow exacting detail.

Then she handed me the fabric….. Drapery Fabric …… It’s like someone asking you to build a desk out of sheetrock. I was so completely set up by my wife and her sweet friend. There was no price high enough for me to do the chairs in drapery fabric. It just won’t turn out right – ever. That’s right – ever.

I let them run off and chat and wondered at my fate. Then I sucked it up and gave her an extremely low price. That way she wouldn’t complain when the inevitable upholstery issues showed. Plus – she made me pies. I couldn’t say to this sweet woman ’there is no way in h… that I would take the job’. It was a job exactly like this one that made me quit the business and go back to school.

Drapery fabric reacts to humidity and stretches in very unusual ways. If you put a staple through a spot, you better make durn sure it’s the right spot because you will get a run all the way across it. If you add trim that is made from the drapery fabric, you have to go old school and pull out the glue. Plus, the stuff is so thin, you couldn’t hide a trim staple to save your life.

So I said to myself, ‘make this lady happy’ and it changed my entire outlook on the whole job. I believe the man upstairs was giving me a nudge. I was a bit ashamed of myself to be quite honest. After a while I decided to give the chairs as much of the Cadillac treatment as I could.

I decided to make the chairs look as much alike as possible. As you can see they were not that alike and they were pretty scratched up.

I very tediously pulled out the old staples without scratching any of the wood then I sanded all the existing scratches and re-stained the wood. I put 3 coats of poly back on when I was done with that.

The wicker was pulling loose in a few spots so I re-glued and waited an extra day.

I fattened up the seat on the smaller chair and boxed it a little. In order to make the fabric fit well and prevent a bunch of runs, I had to spend an extra 2 hours tediously cutting and sewing cutouts for the legs. It never would have worked if I had done it the way it was initially designed.

This is a picture of the glue job on some trim ;)

I’m going to deliver the chairs on Monday and collect that little $175 paycheck and let her believe she is the most generous person on this Earth. However, if she offers me another coconut pie, I don’t think I will turn it down.

Next time – I hope I remember to be a bit more humble. I think I did well by her and the way I treated her. I don’t think It really counts unless you mean it. The good news is, I have a chance to finish off this exchange well. I just need to keep my heart in the right place. This time I’ll mean it when she get’s the chairs.

Vintage Tailgate Benches

Skidog — Sun, 02 Jun 2013 20:57:05 GMT

My wife saw one of these on facebook I believe and ask me if I could build one. I went to EBAY and found a tailgate on bought it. (Big Mistake, EXPENSIVE on that site!) I printed out the pic of the one she saw and commenced to gathering materials. It happened to be a ‘Stepside’ size for my first project. I built it like the one in the picture and sold it right away! However, the buyer had some modifications he wanted done. Well that ended up with a complete frame rebuild. I have now what I think is a perfected design now. Over this past Christmas holiday, I built and sold 19 of these! Talk about saving Christmas! And my only 2 forms of advertising…...Facebook and word of mouth. All free! Its now time to find some more tailgates for Fathers Day!:)

Old sectional. Still in the family!

MarkTheFiddler — Fri, 24 May 2013 23:44:17 GMT

It’s back!

When I worked in Dad’s small furniture manufacturing plant in the late 70’s, I got to learn quite a few things. Back in those days I didn’t do much else but sweep the floor, install springs, strip old furniture (upholstery demo as Gary puts it) stuff cushions and deliver furniture. I remember when we made this sectional. It was a prototype for a style we would sell hundreds of. (Did I say small plant?). I put the springs on these pieces myself.

It went to my mother when the the two separated and I upholsterd it back in the mid 80’s. My sister got the sectional (she lost two of the pieces) after my mother upholstered it again. Mom tried hard but it was not the same anymore.

Well – sis loves cats and they loved her furniture. Yep. She threw the entire set into a leaky rusted shed for a few years where it developed an interesting cat odor and musty smell.

Mom – offered it to me. I drove down and ripped as much fabric and foam off the pieces as I could before transporting them from Houston back to Dallas. They have been sitting in the garage for the most part – sort of. Not important.

I had barely enough fabric to upholster this set. That made it rather time consuming and I had to get creative and combine two different fabrics to make it work. This combination of fabrics may not be your cup of tea but they comine well with the southwest style of my den. I absolutely love it. If I had more fabric, I would not have been as creative with the back cushions. All I had were scraps to work with.

I’m thrilled that the sectional has rejoined the family. It also means that I’m mostly done with my upholstery shop because that spot is EXACTLY where I had the sewing machine sitting. Yeah – A big milestone in my home redo has passed!

Oak mantel w/ebony inlays then stone

Todd Thomas — Mon, 20 May 2013 22:03:04 GMT

milled some rough 3×8 oak timbers, put the in the ebony inlays plus ebony flush square plugs finished in Waterlox Satin
then stoned…....the fireplace I mean :-)

Butcherblock kitchen island

kenzaburo — Wed, 15 May 2013 01:01:17 GMT

In design mode

A different loveseat.

MarkTheFiddler — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 02:23:58 GMT

My wife is changing her mind almost as fast as I can get the work done. That’s ok with me, It’s her house and I want her to be happy. She found a loveseat on the street and said – Perfect size! Make it look like it goes with the couch. Wow.

It was too much of a remake to style it exactly like the couch so I did a few modifications. The arms used to be shaped like peanuts and the back had a dated camel style. The old cushions where attached. On top of that, the loveseat Was a POSomething or other. Anyhow. The thing is now very comfortable and ten times sturdier. All the things that were cheap about the construction is gone. Sorry about not including before pictures – I didn’t take any.

I’m going to do a little photo tutorial on how to create basic throw pillows that are comfortable because I need to throw a couple on the couch to tie in the the decor.

Soccer Ball Padauk and Oak Wood

Waleed Waheed — Thu, 18 Apr 2013 10:49:38 GMT

This is A Soccer Ball from Padauk and Oak wood

Old doors brought back to life

GaryL — Mon, 08 Apr 2013 22:06:15 GMT

Finally talked the homeowner into letting me take her ugly doors and spruce them up a bit. They are about thirty-two years old. It was somewhat of a crapshoot with the doors being painted originally. I had sanded off a section to see if it was possible to bring these up to a stain grade. After stripping and getting the old garbage off (they don’t make a stripper that is worth a *%# anymore), mostly sanding it off, they were in decent condition. I ended up replacing the operating door stile on the lockset side do to being bored and drilled for a mortise style Baldwin lockset. She did not want to spring for new ones of that caliber (expensive) so everything was changed to modern tubular style locksets. Patched the other stile, new panel trim, lower raised panels, and seeded triple pane glass units. Finished with General Finishes 450 series stains and clear coat.

All in all, I was very happy how they turned out. I wasn’t expecting to be able to get a fir door, built to be painted not stained, to turn out as nice as it did. The homeowner loves it…that’s all that matters.

This is before I pulled them. For some reason I did not get a shot from outside. There was also some ugly orange wood storm doors that I removed.

In the shop ready to strip. The interior.

The weathered exterior.

This is the stile I replaced. After stripping I saw they had blew out the side when they had original bored for the mortise lockset. They finalized that decision for major surgery.

The new limb/stile ready for the transplant.

VRM furniture recovered.

MarkTheFiddler — Sat, 06 Apr 2013 23:24:26 GMT

About 6 weeks ago the Victim Relief Ministry reached out to me with a story of a young lady and her 2 children who had gone through more than her share of life recently. They wanted her to have some decent furniture to sit on. She already had an old couch and loveseat. I looked at it and found a good sturdy maple frame underneath so I agreed to recover the furniture. Then I heard about the budget constraints so I came up with a few ideas.

I took The VRM rep and the young lady to a closeout fabric store that has very low prices and very low yardage bolts of fabric. The young lady was not real enthusiastic about the fabrics with ample yardage so I asked her what her favorites were. She showed me 5 bolts and I picked out the 2 that would coordinate the best and asked “How about 2 tone furniture?” She liked the idea. I also knew that we were still short of yardage so I asked “Can we lose the skirt?” Again she gave me a yes.

We got the yardage we needed and the VRM representative paid the less than $100 bill. That $100 came from a single prayer group who just chipped in a few bucks here and there.

I got together with another VRM member and picked up the furniture in his old Suburban. That same guy helped me to strip all the old fabric from the furniture and with the next step.

Because the furniture was made to accommodate a super long skirt, it sat 5 inches off the floor. That would have looked funny so I added 3 inches of frame around the bottom from my gently used lumber collection. Now the furniture sits 2 inches off the floor and the legs are recessed. That’s what I used to call the floating effect.

I always have to spend at least $100 in materials on a project like this but I already had most of what I needed so I only physically spent about $50. My expenses were kept real low.

Then – My compressor broke.

The compressor was one of the last pieces of Harbor Freight equipment I owned so I was prepared to spend $500 on a decent upgrade brand. My wife said – hey, you bought a warranty on that thing. :”ME?” I bought a service warranty on something? Sure enough, I took the compressor back to harbor freight with 22 days left on the guarantee. They replaced it for free.

Someone was looking after me.

My friends, I’m going to conclude this story in an unexpected way. Yes – The young lady loves her furniture. Her kids were already becoming acquainted with it by the time I pulled out the phone to snap a couple of shots. But that is not the end. You see – I was rewarded with more than her heartfelt thank you.

I managed to buy about 450 yards of fabric for about $30 a year ago. Today, I took the fabric to the same fabric store and asked them if they wanted to trade for $125 in credit. The answer was a very kindly yes. I went and picked out a few rolls I wanted to check yardage on. I had with me about $250 worth of fabric at their price (very low). She looked at the rolls and said – that’s 5 yards, that’s 10 yards, that’s 3 yards etc. I knew good and well that she was under stating the actual yardage after she gave her first 2 estimates.

We rolled out my favorite fabric which ended up having 22 yards and that is what I was going to take plus 2 smaller bolts. I said Ok – Let’s go with those 3. She shook her head and said no. She said “if you like them all – take them”.

I was overwhelmed and with a break in my voice I asked “Really?” She just smiled.

I share this story because it is not about what I gave. It’s about what I received. I know who arranged all of that for me. Now I finish the rest of my hosehold upholstery – All of it!

Thanks for reading.
Mark