A Few Random Things

Peonies! I absolutely adore peonies. Their smell is just wonderful and intoxicating. Sadly, the camera seemed to be mainly focused on the clock, so I'll have to give it another shot tomorrow.



I worked a bit more on my antique chair (and on the longcase clock), so I thought I'd post a few photos.

I did my eight-way hand tie on the seat springs, and for the most part, they turned out alright. I have one spring that's a bit off, but it'll be fine. I also still need to finish restoring the finish on the wood before I go any further.





Lastly, I thought I'd share a few photos from work. I'm still getting used to working again after being off for so long, so I'm not sure what my next house project will be. I have several things that REALLY need to be addressed, but those will require me to call some places and get some quotes. I'll keep you guys posted on that.

This is a lovely antique chair that just got redone (by my boss). I'm not a huge fan of the fabric that the client picked (since it's not quite period correct for such an old chair), but it's still nice. It's hard to tell but the front legs of the chair a really nice turned ones with brass casters. The chair is from the late 1800s, and the frame was in pretty rough shape.



In the next little while, my boss and I will be reupholstering two of these matching arm chairs (the feet were removed so it looks a bit funny). I've already stripped off both of them, but I got put on another side project while he finishes a second antique chair for the same client as the striped blue one. It should be quite interesting, so I'll keep you guys updated on this "first big project". This one won't be that bad, since it's a fairly new chair, and all the foam and internal padding/springs are fine. It's just going to be new fabric basically.



It's also good to note that my boss does NOT do recovering, only reupholsery, which involves taking off all previous fabrics. He told me he once had a chair that had FIVE layers of fabric on it.

How I Got My New Job

As I've mentioned a few times in the past few months, I've been laid off work since October, but all that changed just last week! It's been a bit hectic since everything happened really fast.

I went out on Tuesday (June 4th) to see if Fabricville had any supplies that I could use for my chair project. They had lots of decent upholstery fabrics, and gimp (the fancy edging), but no burlap, and no webbing. I knew about an upholsterer that was just a few blocks away, so I walked down there.

I knew about this upholsterer because this was the guy we had used when we did the Pizza Hut job. We built all the seats, but we subcontracted the upholstery portion to this guy, and he had done a really nice job.





So I went there and asked the owner if I could buy some supplies (mainly just the webbing), and he measured-out about 4 or 5 yards of it for me, and charged me 5$. We chit-chatted a bit and I told him I remembered him from the Pizza Hut job, and that I was a cabinetmaker, etc, and he offered me a job. I said yes!

It's not exactly in my field, but upholstery still has a woodworking aspect to it, and I'm sure it's a job that I'm really going to enjoy.

Not only that, it's actually paying better than my woodworking job. I was quite excited to start. I left him my name and phone number, and he called back on Wednesday, letting me know that I could start on Thursday at 8am.

Currently I'm not working on anything too exciting, but I'm really looking forward to working on some rather complicated pieces. Right now I'm stripping old vinyl covers off some seats and backs from a clinic. There are a LOT of pieces, and I've been stripping them off for the past 3 days (with about another day left).

These are the ones I've done so far...



One of the old vinyl covers:


So here's the chair so far. I completely reglued the frame and glue blocks with hide glue, attached the webbing, and sewed the springs.





To stretch the webbing tightly, I made myself a home-made webbing stretcher out of some scrap plywood.



This is how you would use it. The webbing to the upper left would be tacked at one end of the chair, and the other end would be tensioned by leveraging the handle downwards. The extra webbing looped over the front of the "paddle" would protect the edge of the chair. It actually worked really well.



While I did the hide-glue repairs to the chair, I also repaired this clock. All of the top pieces are new replacement pieces (all the originals had been broken off and lost decades ago), and I had originally glued them down with hide glue, but they had snapped off during the move back in 2010. Now it's all nice and secure again. This is a wooden-works clock (all the gears and plates are wood), with a hand painted wood dial, and it's from around 1830-1835. I also started to paint the tablet in the bottom (which was also missing), but it's not finished. Currently it only has the border done in gold and silver bronzing powders, but it will also have a painted scene with trees in the centre.



More soon!

"Tearing Off"

In upholstery, "tearing off" is the step where all the old upholstery, webbing, fabric, springs, and the myriad of tacks are removed from the piece. This particular chair felt like a multi-layered archaeological dig.

The first thing to be removed was the top fabric, which is some sort of brocade of leaves on a dark background.



When I flipped it over, I was very surprised to see how colourful it once was (however, keep in mind that the colours would be the opposite on the reverse: all that pink and light green would be very minimal on the front side).



I tried washing a section to see if I could revive the colours a bit, but the fabric is simply too faded. You can catch a glimpse of the original colours from this edge. It shows some nice tealy-blue-green, a dark background, and highlights of small pink and light green flowers. All the orange spots are rust from the tacks.



I flipped through my old furniture reference books, and I was surprised to see nearly the same fabric on this 1840's Empire sofa:



Under the top fabric was a very thin cotton cover, and I noticed part of a faded logo on the side.



Through the magic of Photoshop, I was able to enhance it. The photo is B&W because otherwise it would have been neon blue-green since I had to mess around with the colours.



The design reads "Royal Household" Trade Mark Registered. I assumed it was from a flour bag, and I was correct! Google turned up several results.





Under the cotton was what I can only guess to be a layer of wool?



Followed by straw...



Then the very shredded/mangled remnants of jute...



And the springs, which are not exactly properly tied, and have a few torn lashings.



The actual "webbing" was a joke. I assume that this was an early DIY repair, since I can't imagine that proper webbing would have been that expensive. These are machine sewn with several decorative patterns used over/across the pieces.

Cotton fabric scraps were never designed to be load-bearing, and they eventually failed, causing the bottom of the chair to be torn out.



Yesterday I mentioned "chair number two", which I also picked up a few years ago at the road while doing yard sales with my Mom. This one has an early French-Quebec style look to it. I thought it would make a fairly easy repair project since it's already almost down to bare wood, and had already been stripped down to the frame.

The front bar with the springs on it popped-off while I was bringing the chair up from the basement.





Both chairs partially disassembled.



I'm hoping that our local fabric store has a lot of the materials I'll need for these chairs. I hate to have to mail-order a bunch of the supplies and pay for all the shipping. I know they have upholstery fabrics, linen, possibly some jute, and MAYBE the webbing.

More soon.

Random Side Projects

As some of you might know, I'm a clockmaker, but the house has pretty much taken up all my spare time and energy. For several months, I've had a longcase clock that I started working on for a client (the parents of a friend), and I've been lazy/side tracked. For two months I've done *no work* on it, which is pretty lame of me. I decided to get back to it today.

Since I'll be working with animal hide glue for a lot of the longcase clock's repairs, I also decided that I would simultaneously work on 2 (3, 4, 5?) other side projects that require hide glue repairs. The first of these is this antique chair (see below). The second is yet another chair (I'll share photos tomorrow). 3 is a very quick repair to the mirror stand from my antique walnut bedroom set (already done), and 4 & 5 will be to fix 2 clock tops that were damaged in the move back in 2010.

This chair is actually a trash find (which means it was free!) I was walking home one evening on garbage night (or possibly the evening before), and this chair caught my eye, so I took it home. It wasn't too heavy, and luckily it was only 2 blocks away.



The chair is mahogany with its original crackled shellac finish. The old upholstery was in TERRIBLE shape, but overall, I thought it could make a nice piece once restored. The shape is also a bit unusual. I can't say that I've ever seen another one with this type of shape on the back rest.

When I brought it home and had a good look at it, I noticed that it was actually stuffed with STRAW! It was also apparent that the last person to upholster it didn't do the best job, and had several "make do" pieces, like the sewn scraps of fabric for the webbing (shakes head).



They just don't make furniture like this these days. Not a single piece of wood on this chair is flat. Every single piece has curves and bends, and precisely cut angles and joints. Also notice the nice edge ribbon detail.



Here are the scrap fabric webbing pieces (which failed). They are sewn with a sewing machine, but the repairs and upholstery job look VERY old (I'd say early 1900s).



I spent about a good hour this afternoon tearing off all the old fabric, ripping out hundreds of tiny little upholstery tacks, and dealing with all the old straw stuffing. It was kind of a mess.

I also knocked-apart the chair and later in the evening I glued it all back together again while I did one or two small glue jobs on the clock case pieces. More photos tomorrow. I'll also share a detailed photo of the original (or second upholstery job) fabric, ribbon, and the other chair. Both these old chairs will likely be used in the living room.

Living Room :(

Well I've had a full day to look at it, and think about it, and I definitely hate it. It just doesn't blend-in well with all the other colours in the house. I'll either be repainting it, or I might try some type of stencil over it? Thoughts?



Viewed from the office:





The colour appears to be a bit more "quiet" or soft in this photo (closer to what I was hoping for).







:(

Living Room Painted

I painted the living room today.

I have mixed feelings about the colour. I am trying to decide if I love it, or if I hate it.

- It's not too dark, which is nice, but it's BRIGHT.
- The shade of green is alright, but it might not be the best shade for the living room (which I wanted to be a bit more formal).

If I had to pick a few words to describe the colour: Pistachio ice cream.

I'll do the touch-ups tomorrow, and then post photos.

Pain in the Neck!

Alright, so this is the first house related (progress) post in quite a while. This afternoon I painted the rest of the original tongue and groove ceilings on the main floor (those being the ceiling in the main hallway, and the ceiling in the living room). It took about 2-3 hours, and I went through about 1/2 a can of paint (I finished one and had to start on another), but it's finally OVER.

I've been both looking forward to, and dreading this job for about a month now, but now I can go ahead and paint the living room (tomorrow or Sunday).

I actually started around 1:00pm but I ran out of green painter's tape, so I had to run out and buy more, so I think I got back and was painting just before 2pm, and I finished around 4:30ish (including cleaning the paintbrush and putting things away).

Hallway:



Part of that time was also spent emptying out that bookcase in the living room. The cabinet is only 50" squared, but you wouldn't believe how many books fit in there! The weight of all the books (almost all large hardcovers) must be at least 500lbs or more.





The ceiling in the living room was the one that had the most dramatic transformation. I think it was only painted once or twice, and for the most part, a bunch of the old orange shellac is bleeding through the paint. It actually looked like nicotine build-up, but I tried washing a spot, and it made no noticeable difference, which is why I assumed it was shellac.



This was the last strip to be painted.



The finished ceiling. I notice that in the photos, it's more clearly visible where the lighter white repaired boards are. It's not really that noticeable in person. I'm NOT doing another coat.

Watercolour (Done)

I didn't think I would finish this watercolour this quickly (I prepped the paper and did the tracing on Monday, then the moth on Tue, and the rest last night).

The flowers went fairly quickly, and initially they were done in just a single magenta colour. Later on, I went back and added darker shading to them in a darker pinkish-red.



The leaves also went fairly quickly. Oddly enough, one of the nicer shades of green I have is from that giant set of 6 "pucks" which we used to use in schools as kids. I also used the black from that same palette to shade/tint the green, and for the background.

I took some artistic liberties to stretch the image a bit, since I wanted to fill-in a bit more over the top flower, and under the tails. I also made some of the leaves just a tad brighter than the original photo (which you can see more clearly in my print-out that I used for the tracing.



Lastly, here is the finished piece. The only thing left to add is my signature, but since the background is a saturated black, I want to sign it with a gold pen. I can't find the one that I had several years back, so I'll have to get a new one.

I like how it somehow evokes the look of old fashioned wallpaper, as well as old European paintings where they always used a black (or very dark) background.