The sofa is finished!

Here is the rundown:
- refinished frame

- retied coil springs

- new padding

- new stuffing

- new lush velvet

- antique european grain sacks ( laundered &

sanitized ... good as new)

Basically it's a brand new sofa on an antique Late Classicism (1835-1850) mahogany frame!

One grain sack was used to cover the front

2 similar colored sacks were used to cover the back

The grain sack came with the letters KC embroidered on it, that's how the farmers
could tell which sacks were theirs.

I had originally considered painting the frame but couldn't 

bring myself to do it.  

Even though it's mostly veneer the crotch cut 

mahogany is 162+ years old and 

deserves the respect of not being covered up. 

The strip of trim at the base was blending 

in too much though so I did 

put some gold paint on that and rubbed it down

so the gold stayed only in the recesses and now the trim pops!

Here is a before shot:

BEFORE: red velvet was at least the second covering it had on it, before that was a green fabric.

AFTER: I followed the original frame tufting detail and it really makes a difference.

BEFORE: years of grime built up on the frame

AFTER: nastiness gone and lovely flame goodness shining

You can check out the whole journey with this piece by clicking on the Mahogany Empire Sofa label

at the bottom of this post and to the right.

It is currently at the Repurposed & Refined warehouse,
if anyone is interested in it let me know.

Partying with:
Under the Table and Dreaming

Primitive & Proper
Between Naps On The Porch
Savvy Southern Style
{Primp}
The Shabby Creek Cottage
504 Main

Miss Mustard Seed

No. 3

The last couple of days I've managed to get a fair 

amount of work done on the sofa.

I retied the springs:

and worked on replacing some pieces in the arm frame:

built up the seat cushion:

pressed and poked through 34 buttons

and then tied them off until my fingers were ready to bleed:

The more I work with this gold velvet the more I like it!

On Sunday it occurred to me that the same "No 3" is written on various parts

of the frames.  Having numbers written on frames is normal but usually there

are differing numbers.  These are all the same which makes me wonder if

that means that this is the 3rd sofa that the furniture maker constructed?

I also noticed some initials written on one of the arm frames:

I was showing the initials to my husband and while slowly reading off the letters to him

(they are hard to make out) he says in a perfect Ralphy impression:

"Drink"

"your"

"Ovaltine"

hahaha ... I love how he keeps me laughing!

the sofa design

Deciding what fabric to use on a piece of

furniture is my biggest hurdle.

I've already decided and changed my mind twice now as

far as fabric goes for this piece.

Now I'm pretty convinced that I Will use the antique european grain

sacks that just arrived from Austria.

But do I use them solo?

Or do I go with a contrast sort of thing... 

the utilitarian grain sack mixed with the king of fabrics velvet?

Once I get past that decision, then do I leave it deconstructed like the popular

RHardware style ... which might work well with such an old sofa

or do I just cover the sides and back in burlap?

I know what I would like but I'm not keeping this,

 it's going to this month's

tag sale at Repurposed & Refined.

That is ... as long as I stop goofing off on the puter and

get myself back to work!

I'm partying with:

MMS Furniture Feature Friday

Sofa Update

Yesterday I finished sanding the frame and put teak oil on it:

Here you can see where I started to use the oil on the bottom rail

Above is what the frame looked like before I stripped/sanded it

Here it is sanded down & while I am adding the oil

So today I worked on the fixing the frame where the feet attach.

One corner was fine, one corner was 

gunked up with old messy glue:

And two were broken.

I chiseled out the old wood then cut & glued the replacements.  

Tomorrow I will move on to reattaching the feet, cutting new stretchers for the arms, cleaning up the spring ties and then

rebuilding the cushions.

I started on the sofa

I started to take the sofa apart and I'm fairly excited about it.
The first thing I liked about it is that the frame is thick and big boned!

To me it looks like mahogany veneer with a solid strip of mahogany along the knee roll area:

Look!  Burlap feed sack from one of the mills in Buffalo NY ...
it's like I was meant to work on this sofa

The innards:

I'd like to take the inside frames with me into
town today to see if I can get someone to give me some info.

Are those lines the result of hand cutting?

The bottom of the seat frame is made up of 15" wide planks ... the wood looks like cedar
to me but I'm probably wrong.  15 inches wide!

And check this out ... square nails!  

Yesterday I tried to strip the finish off but it didn't want to come off very easily so I ended up
sanding it.

It has it's dings and you can see the numerous spots where the
veneer has been fixed but the fixes were done very well.

Next step is to put a finish on the wood.
Do I go with a wax or do I go with something along the lines of a polyurethane?


I'm partying with:
Transformation Thursday #150
MMS Furniture Feature Friday

In Progress #5

This past week has been a bit of a bust for me 

as far as projects go.

I used the first 2 days after the warehouse sale to take a 

breather, and then the rest of the time has been spent

getting the workroom & basement back in order

and taking 3 college tours.

The last one was Rutgers up in New Jersey ... 

that place is huge!

We are taking another tour this coming week but in

the meantime I am going to start working on one of the following:

Craigslist cabriole twins

Craigslist nouveau twins:

Auction side chair: 

Yard sale boudoir.  The fun thing about this chair is that it still had the original

cover and tags on it.  Manufactured in 1945 with a filling of moss & cotton!

I'm not a huge fan of boudoir chairs because they

sit so low to the ground and I have long legs but I just may have to keep this

one.  It's 67 years old and I'm the only other person to work

on it's innards since it was first made!

Auction American empire style sofa:

 Thrift store side chair twins...

my first big fail!

They have been recovered a couple of times

resulting in a ripped up, disintegrating frame.

The chairs had a solid enough feel to them but I guess that was because the last 

time they were worked on the

fabric was just added over top of the existing material.

Stripping these was pretty easy because the tacks basically

fell out of the wood ... the edges are disintegrating.

The rotted frame gave way with only a little pressure:

Now I need to either rebuild the entire frame (probably not going to happen)

or salvage what I can and repurpose the legs & decorative

elements into a new project.  

Perhaps a couple of foot stools or even a pair of very fancy dog beds?!

My first sale!

Whew it's been a while since I posted last, sorry for being so stagnant!

I have been pushing to get some chairs done for the tag sale at Repurposed & Refined this weekend and everything is finally done and delivered!

The hardrive on the laptop died and with it went a lot of my upholstering photos.

So I'm very limited on what I can show for 'Before' photos but at least I can

show the results!

This Crazy Ol' Bird fanback used to be my Thistle chair .

The reds, purples and greens in the fabric play perfectly well

with the reddish/purple stained arms and legs.

Here is the little boudoir chair that I showed in my last post.  The material

is a thick purple, brown & gold chenille:

The oatmeal club chair turned out lovely!

I thought the wingback that was in my last post was going to be the easiest to work on but once I got a look at the frame I realized it had some support issues on the back.  Whoever worked on recovering it last tried to make it more stable with nails but that only made it worse because the nails split the wood.

So I opted to just trim the wings off (have I mentioned how much I like the reciprocating saw?!)  

I can show you the diagram that I drew on the chalkboard to 

help me think it through:

Thus the wingback was reworked into a club chair.

In keeping with the whole 'repurpose' theme I covered the piece in heavy

canvas remnants.  I purchased the canvas at a yard sale ... it was new but

in pieces and folded so there are visible fold marks and seams

in unusual places but I like how the canvas gives the

chair a nice utilitarian feel to it.

and of course the beautiful Buttercup high back:

Phew ... I am fairly exhausted!
I'm already planning what pieces to work on for next month's sale.  In fact
I stopped on my way home from the warehouse yesterday and bought 4 chairs that
I found on Craigslist.

Weeee ... I love upholstering!


Linking up with Funky Junk's SNS #130