The round backed Spanish chair I am working on at the moment has a sprung seat and when I stripped it back I found 7 springs that looked very much worse for wear.
How to: cleaning rusty springs
Tools
How to: Webbing
I am quite brief in my descriptions of the actual process of reupholstering items. If I broke everything down every time I would end up writing a whole book and besides, I am firmly a believer that if you would like to learn how to do this, you should go to a class. However, when I was first starting out, I struggled to find any kind of materials online to remind me what my teacher had said, without it being a high speed video of someone with a staple gun. Staple guns have their place, but traditional upholstery does not use them and that’s why I try not to either.
Mini Raised Beds
A gardening post because of all the sunshine recently!
Last autumn, I was watching an inordinate number of episodes of Gok Wan’s Fill Your House for Free. While I think I preferred Kirstie Allsop’s version, the phrase ‘made with pallet wood we sourced for free online’, obviously filtered into my head because when I saw some old pallets destined for the skip at college, I put one in my car without a moment’s thought. For the next six months, that pallet languished in my little garden, taking up space and definitely not improving its looks.
PSA: Wear Safety Specs!
Remember at school, when you were carrying out some innocuous activity or another, and your teacher made you wear those awful plastic safety googles that were horribly uncool, blurred your vision and made it harder to finish you task? If you were lucky you got safety glasses that were slightly less awful. You only wore them when the teacher was looking and pushed them up on top of your head the rest of the time.
Every Upholsterer’s Essential Tools
When I started upholstery, I didn’t think I would be doing this for very long so I kept purchases to a minimum. Because I learn at a college, I could get away with having no tools at all and borrow everything during my lessons. However this is definitely not an option as I am horribly competitive with myself and need the resources to carry on my projects at home.