Owner M wished to have the covering replaced on outdoor lounge and increase the thickness of the foam filled seat cushions. Unfortunately we lost the opportunity to take a photo of the original condition but here is a picture of the finished product. Note the four-legged users? They took an immediate liking to the new cushions!
My "before" chair images are a bit sketchy, as in I'm not sure I actually took any pictures of the set of six that came my way this summer. However, I can show a few pictures of "along-the-way" and "after" images.
John got my contact information from a master craftsman and woodworker Tom, who John had hired to restore the wooden portion of a set of six Victorian era Eastlake dining chairs. It was a genuine delight to work with John and I'm pleased to report he asked if I'd be willing to do a few more chairs for him in the future. He's happy, and I'm thrilled!
Before I get to the chairs let's get an overview of the Eastlake style. I'm sure you could pop over to Wikipedia and find information on Charles Eastlake and the Eastlake architectural movement in the Victorian era. From Wikipedia, one of the core principles of this style is reported to be, "Eastlake thought furniture should be good looking and be made by manufacturers who enjoyed their work" or perhaps another way of saying this, he expected the craftspeople to take personal pride in their work - something Alan and I are very much appreciate. My takeaway for identifying the Eastlake style is by examining the furniture for carvings formed into the frame of chairs or faces of other furniture, as opposed to carvings glued onto the wood.
This is a photo of a finished, or nearly finished, Eastlake dining chair. I'll talk about some of the details such as tufting in future articles.
The best I can do for a "before" image is this, a comparison between the before and after inside backs.
Over time, John has accumulated several pieces and after having the wood restored, brought them to me. We decided against restoring with burlap and horsehair, instead opting for post-WWII techniques. As much fun as it could be to work with traditional materials and tools, I have a thing for using air powered staple guns and foam saws! While they didn't exactly match, all six chairs needed to be stripped of old upholstery and new under-seat webbing installed. Which meant the work had to start with a complete tear down then rebuild from scratch. In this case, resetting the coil springs in place after the webbing was installed.
I called my upholster mentor Rollin in for this project for several reasons, but mostly because this was a big one and I didn't want to screw it up by myself! Rollin, remember Rollin? He's my friend who's been doing this kind of work for the past six decades and isn't afraid to tell me to take something apart if it doesn't look right. As I was hand-stitching the springs to the webbing on the first chair, Rollin shook his head and sent me to the supply catalog to buy a Klinch-It tool made for securing coil springs to webbing. I nearly choked upon seeing the price but after I put that tool to work, I figured it would pay for itself after the first couple of jobs!
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A few things worth knowing about leather:
Leather absorbs dyes at different rates depending on where it was taken from the hide and if the animal had any skin imperfections such as bug bites or flesh wounds. For these reasons and others, dyed leather products will often exhibit some variations in color and texture. This is part of the natural beauty of leather and is nothing to be concerned about.
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Someone recently asked where I've been. My thoughts immediately went to, "nowhere" as that's about the only place I've been the past couple of years. But that's not what this person wanted to know. You see, the last time I posted anything to this website was about 2 1/2 years ago! A more fitting title of this post should be, "How Did That Happen?!!!"
Since someone is looking at this site it only seems reasonable that we should keep it updated. There's been a LOT of water under the proverbial bridge in the past couple of years so I'll try to keep this article brief in an attempt to catch other up on the status of Russ & Alan's adventures!
First, we've been busy. Not only learning upholstery and leather skills, but with our personal lives, with work, and family. Alan is now a "second-time" grandfather, still working full-time, and engages in upholstery and leather work as his schedule permits. I on the other hand wrapped up teaching a few months ago and am currently enjoying retirement - although I feel I'm more busy than I ever was when working at the university. My youngest child graduated college and was recently accepted into grad school - talk about an increase in stress levels! There's no question, her mother and I are going to miss her terribly... at least for a few weeks...
Second, and back to upholstery work, oh my goodness, the last posted article was such a long time ago! I've worked on a lot of projects since and will try to start posting a few pictures to keep with the mission of this site, documentation of our adventure.
Last, so yes, Alan and Russ are both still alive, as is our hobby making and repairing things. I can't speak for Alan here but I'm proud to be a "maker" - of course, I was a maker before being a maker was cool! I think Alan was as well. Remember, we're both old guys who know how to make and fix stuff!
I'm so happy! Upholsterer mentor Rollin came by tonight to offer his critique of the barrel chair project I recently wrapped up. The exciting news is, my skill status has officially been upgraded from "amateur" to "enthusiast" and for me that's exciting!
Oh sure, there's a long way to go to get to the point where I could call myself a professional upholsterer, but, I'm getting better with experience, and quite frankly the quality of work I'm doing isn't bad, especially given the projects I've been working on have been rather complicated - although I am ready for something easy! With all of that said, I'm very much enjoying my time learning this craft and am looking forward to the next project that shows up on my doorstep.
