brothers from different mothers

The twins started as a pair of singles.

Thats kinda the way of it in this stuff.  You come across a single piece, buy it on spec, and fire it into the storage pit (here there be dragons...) while you figure out what it matches.  Sometimes it does match a piece we have and we build up a suite, or at least a pair of matched pieces.

Other times, we have to just accept that its and orphan.

Anyway, by good luck we managed to end up with the Twins.  One I know came from Avondale, but I don't remember where the other is from.  Jos did the upholstery for them ages back and we had a go at refinishing the frame of one with a satin polyurethane finish.  It looked ok!

Then - true to form - they sat around a while.  This gave us time to procrastinate.  Which is good, since that takes a lot of time.

Our recent flush of excitement brought them out again.  After all, they are nearly finished.  We decided to go with the full strip and furniture oil finish for the frames, so all the hard work of 'urethaning the one frame went west...

It was worth it though.  What do you reckon?

coffee anyone?

Do you like the coffee table in the pictures in the previous post? We do! We bought it off Trade Me and it looked like this... Actually, this image makes it look good - it had lots of paint spot and heat rings all over it, and was looking a bit tired.

A few hours later, it looks great! OK its no Otto Larsen - its a veneered chipboard top, but the sub-frame is solid mahogany-esque and the wicker insert is complete and tidy. Now all the heat rings and paint spots are gone, and the blonde streak shines through the newly oiled surface, its a great addition to the family.

Expect to see a lot of it in various poses with sale items this year!

gee, we've been lazy...

Its been a while. OK, ages.

We've used weather, family commitments, phases of the moon, global warming, anything to avoid the effort of finishing any of the (mumble too many mumble mumble) projects we have on the go.

But we met up with Dave (sculda) a few weeks back and got re-energised. He put us onto a supplier of paint-stripper that works oh-so-well! So we immediately started into it again. The outcome is the completion of Heidi, the hardback sofa.

Heidi came to us from west Auckland. No black t-shirt or ugg boots, but also not the best looking westie chick. Outrageous. We were fortunate.

Jos took ages to do the upholstery. It was a learning curve for sure. The fabric chosen came from modus100 on Trade Me. She sources some really cool stuff from around the place, and we bought a few metres of this stuff on spec.

So all the upholstery got done including new squabs, and then we stalled. It was only the arrival of the new paint stripper (sorry - not saying what that is!) that got us under way again.

OMG. Polystrippa, Coopers, and all the other products are just, well, bollocks compared to this stuff. Its quick, clean and leaves a great surface for us to refinish the timber.

Heidi loved it! We pulled her completely to pieces - the base frame down to components. Every piece was individually stripped, sanded, oiled and reassembled back to the base. The seat frame was not stripped since it as in excellent original condition.

So, anyway, here she is. Up on Trade Me in the next couple of days.

The hard (back)yards - sourcing product

Before we can sell this to you, before we can have the oddly masochistic fun of restoring, before all this we have to source interesting items.

Trade Me has made that easier for sure. In the old days we would be out at 6.00am, circling the neighbourhood, tracking down garage sales to get in on a bargain before anyone else was having breakfast.

In the past year, we have been getting all our base material from Trade Me. Problem is, so does everyone else. And we have been joined on Trade Me by a number of regulars, all chasing the same pieces.

Its oddly expensive, this hobby. Given that the typical sofa consumes around eight metres of fabric, there is up to $400 in that alone. Finishing materials for the timberwork are around $50 a piece, and the labour is just too expensive to think about. Good thing its a hobby, 'cos at minimum wage we are loosing money!

So when we buy, it has to be cheap. Or free. Nothing else makes sense.

With scandi-style and 50's retro/kiwiana being so popular at the moment, its tough getting nice pieces to work on (we are down to our last six suites!).

So, if you have something that needs "doing" get in touch - we could be in the market, or could give you a great deal!

Mareta has a bath

Mareta has been sitting on our covered deck for the last couple of weeks waiting for us to clear other stuff out of the way. Today was her day - bath time!

Steel wool is wonderful stuff. Not the "steelo" type you get at the supermarket - go to the paint and decorating section of your hardware store and you will find it in a wide range of abrasive-nesses. The thing about steel wool is that it cleans and removes old paint and scuff marks, but unlike a course sandpaper it doesn't score the timber.

As you can see from the images, Mareta is still in good structural condition, but her surface finish is, franky, knackered. As we scrubbed, layers of dirt, oils and finishing products peeled away revealing a really nice grain structure.

I got a bit excited at the end of all this scrubbing and so I grabbed the squabs that we intend to sell Mareta with and took a couple of images to get an idea of how she will look. Hope you like it - our lady in red.

The black sheep

Ugly huh? You are soooooooo shallow!

This ugly duckling suite is going to be a serious (black) swan. OK, so some damn fool has applied a layer of acrylic black paint over the frame - so what?

With a couple of days of sanding and preparation, this frame set will be ready for refinishing and we are thinking that the ebony look is actually pretty styley.

So sit back from the screen a bit, squint a little and imagine an ebony frame with grain detail just coming through, and a set of subtle squabs in a beige heavy weave fabric - plain at a distance, but highly detailed close up.

I reckon ready to go by the end of September - post a comment if you have suggestions for a different finish.

Dumpster diving!

Inorganic rubbish collections - you gotta love them!

Today, I spotted a very sad Don concorde-arm sofa in a pile of inorganic due for collection. The folding frame looks like a number of very ADHD kids had spent five minutes jumping on it, and there are no cushions, but the base frame is good.

I'm going back for it tonight!

UPDATE: The frame is a wreck, not worth saving. Makes me feel a bit sick actually. However, it does have a host of good hardware that will be donated to other not-so-damaged pieces so they can live another day.

The rest is firewood.