Two horribly dirty armchairs from the Seventies had a modern make over.
Grey body with brown piping and yellow details on the front.
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A friend found this rocking chair/glider/nursing chair on the street, far away in Bat Yam and gave it to me. It lacked seats and a back rest and probably once it had a gliding stool to accompany it, but not any more. It was huge and I had no idea what to do with it so I asked my guy. He said make something crazy, something that would fit in Alice in Wonderland. Well, that didn't make it easier. So it just stood there in the corner of the room for 6 months - but the cats loved it. Then I went for a visit to Sweden and in an unassuming department store on Christmas Eve I saw this amazing colourful fabric with wild animal heads. It just made me laugh out loud and I knew I had found the solution. I wish I could find the designer of the fabric to give him/her some credit but all research has turned up no clues to where it is from originally. I painted the chair with 5 layers of home made Milk Paint: dark blue, cream, bright red, turquoise and grassy green. Then I distressed it in places to reveal the different layers. This quirky glider has become a favourite of many friends who visit and the cats still fight over who gets to sleep on it. Caroline: I got this chair for next to nothing in a terrible condition - painted white and without seats - from a student who wanted to get some extra cash. The chair had bite marks all over the legs from a smaller dog and one armrest had been fastened into place with a large nail right through the top. I used a heat gun to get most of the thick paint off and sanded it down, to get the paint out of the bite marks I actually sat with a small pin needle and chiseled it out with huge patience. It was utterly boring and many days I wanted to give up and leave little flecks of white paint here and there. But I didn't and now this is my favorite armchair. I kept the large nail through the armrest as a reminder of its past and I patched up the bite marks a bit, but also here I wanted to keep a bit of history on one leg. The seats I recycled from an old no longer existent couch that I had found in a friends attic. The little stool I bought at the flea market. Someone had literally staple gunned an ordinary pillow to make a seat for it. I built it up from scratch and glued a large crack running down one leg. I stained it and dressed it to match the armchair. Many have seen the resemblance of these kind of chairs and the 1960s Danish styled furniture. I have been told that at the time carpenters in Israel actually just copied or borrowed ideas straight out of Danish furniture catalogs since it was nearly impossible or extremely expensive to import these kinds of items. Please click on one picture below to see the gallery of before and after pictures. Caroline: These 2 cupboards were bought 3 generations back and given fresh paint in the 70s. Now it was time for another refreshment. I was asked to try to match the colour of the tiles in the bathroom - marine blue and seaweed green both with a cream colour marble effect. After sanding and priming I painted the inside and out, polished the hardware and varnished with my favourite Danish floor varnish (Bondex by Dyrup) which creates a hard and water resistant surface. All primer, paints and varnish that I use are water based i.e. easier on my nose and head, easier to clean sponges, rollers etc and better for the environment. I ended up painting 3 different versions before settling on this marine blue with cream and green colour veins, the inside is golden mustard with cream veins. See pictures below, of before and after and close up of the tiles. I will not add captions to the pictures as it seems to mess up the images when viewed on a smart phone. This a a reproduction bar on wheels made in the 80s, that I was asked to cover with decoupage of my choice. The couple who own it travel quite a bit and I chose to use that as an inspiration. I asked them which cities they had visited together and the area where they had stayed. Then I took street maps of the cities and designed them in three tones white (streets), grey (buildings) and blue (water). These maps I merged together in what (from a distance) looks like one large city with a river running through it. The cities in the map are: Paris, Bangkok, Athens, Berlin - Kreuzberg, Barcelona, Cape Town, Florence, Hong Kong, Jerusalem, Rome, Bologna and Verona For the bottom shelf of the bar I got inspiration from my sister who suggested that I should use the maps of the international airport terminals in the above mentioned countries. I made outlines of the terminals in black and white (in Photoshop) and just positioned them in a sort Tetris pattern. I painted the legs and wheels blue-grey to suit the interior style of the room that the bar would live in. Detailed pictures of the process are found below in the gallery. I am not adding captions at the moment since I've found that it messes up the pictures if viewed on a mobile phone. So I will let the pictures speak for themselves: When I moved to this country I dropped everything and for a long while (it took time to get permits etc) I didn't have a job. So living off just my meager savings, half a salary (my partner was a student) and my in laws, we did not have much money to go around. Actually we had no money at all. Unfortunately around this time my partner's friends all started to get married and as the custom here is to give the married couple a check to "start their new life" (and pay for the huge party), we had a problem. We decided that we would create something together (music and art) and give the married couple a gift instead. But the task drowned when the number of married friends became so large that we didn't know where to begin and how to end. Then our friend Sarai found a chair on the street and with no idea on how I should redo it, I took inspiration from her life and made Sarai's Tel Aviv Chair - it became their wedding gift. Shortly thereafter Sarai gave me another chair and I decided to make it into a theme. This chair is for Adi and Michelle. Michelle's favourite colour is orange - thereof the legs. They both love all night parties and India - thereof the "Mandala" created by casual jeans scraps with the trance colours of orange, pink and red. The back rest is also made from jeans cutoffs and shaped after the hexagon pattern on a football (soccer ball) since Adi is a huge fan and a sports journalist. I hope they will enjoy it. At the moment there are 3 other chairs in the process of becoming wedding gifts... Caroline: A little while back I got a slightly odd request. Someone wanted me to attach soft seats to some kitchen chairs. I suggested getting some cushions - you know the type that ties onto the back or legs - but in this case the person wished to have the soft cushions attached to the seats permanently. I met with them and it turned out that because of illness it was hard for them to sit on hard chairs without sliding off. So I understood the need. The person also had a strong wish as to HOW the seats would look and gave me two old cushions that they wished to use as material. The cushions were quite small so I couldn't take the easy way out and wrap the material around the whole seat. Instead I had to devise small seats that were attached and try to hide the staples underneath. After twisting the problem around in my head for a while I figured out how to do it neatly. It took many hours of getting the tiny piece of fabric to fit and hand stitching but in the end it turned out quite nice and comfortable. Here are a few pictures: Caroline: A couple of weeks ago we had snow, an amazing amount of snow and it stayed for quite a while. I took the opportunity of being boarded up inside to finish some odd jobs - in other words 3 little stools. Shrafraf in Hebrew, my new favourite word. I am hoping to sell 2 of them to pay for my lovely sander that I bought a while back. Let me know if you are interested. Click on a picture below to enlarge and scroll through the gallery: |
Linnea & Caroline2 foreigners in Israel trying to find their space. Up-cycling furniture and clothes for a better environment and future. Check us out on Instagram:
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