Caroline: This is Yaron's chair which had been covered by a blanket for the past number of years to hide the bland skin coloured fabric of it. After finding a nice colourful curtain from the 70's they asked me if I could reupholster it. Which is ok but just to let everyone know, to use a fabric that is not meant to be used for upholstery of furniture is a little bit tricky. First one must stabilize the fabric by gluing (ironing on) another material called Vlieselin on to the back. This takes along time since the iron has to stand in one spot for at least 30 seconds. So you can imagine the amount of time it takes to do a big piece or curtain with a tiny iron. The second problem is that with the Vlieselin on the back the fabric becomes very rigid, it is not stretchy at all, which makes it very hard to stretch over a chair that is rounded. Therefore one ends up with little creases which are hard to remove. I am hoping that with time that the fabric will shaped itself, but time might just as well make the creases more visible. I will have to wait and see. In the end it turned out quite pretty I think.
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Caroline: As requested here is a step by step guide of the process of redoing a stool. Most of the text you will find under each photograph. I just want to say that I have discovered that the world of upholstery is amazingly stimulating and fun! All the different layers and the seat springs that in this case have been hand made by someone at least 70 years ago are beautiful. Click on one picture to see the gallery and step by step guide: Caroline: This was a commissioned job, to reupholster 2 stools from the beginning of the last century. The clients had an old curtain from the 70's that they wanted me to use and it turned out great. Click on a picture in the gallery below to get details of each step of the transformation from brown, dirty corduroy stools that melted into the background, to happy colourful stools that make a statement. Thank you Yaron for taking the beautiful 'after' pictures and thank you Khaleesi for posing so nicely! Caroline: This chair was found on the street by my wonderful friend Sarai, she is an author and writes about Israeli life in Tel Aviv and in India. So what better than a chair about Tel Aviv on pink Indian cotton fabric? Since the chair was beyond restoration - it was splattered with paint and dark oil had penetrated the wood - I had to paint it. I chose another extreme colour to match the already screaming pink. Perhaps I was thinking of the strong colours of India or perhaps I just felt more colourful than bland that day. I embroidered the back rest with a map of northern Tel Aviv, the green outlines are buildings - of where Sarai and her lovely husband Roy live and some of our mutual friends. The 2 thicker lines on the right side is the Ayalon motorway and up top you can see the blue outline of the Yarkon river. The large roundabout is Kikar HaMedina (Square of the Nation) and slightly below it to the left is an empty rectangle which is Kikar Rabin (Rabin Square). Click on a picture below to see larger pictures of the chair before and after. Caroline: A friend found this rocking chair in pieces in a dumpster and told me "Do what ever you want" so of course I wanted to try something different. On many blogs and pages from the US about up-cycling furniture they write about milk paint. Milk paint is probably the oldest painting technique in the world. It has been used in cave paintings and apparently the ancient Egyptians used it in their tombs. Now it is used mostly on furniture to create an antique look or as some call it - "shabby chic". Now I do not really like "shabby chic" painting, I mean I do like an old piece of furniture with old paint peeling off it, but I want it real, a real old piece of furniture with a story and five layers of paint that have been put on by different owners over the years. The stuff one can buy today, that has been painted and then sand papered to look old, does not feel real to me. But that is just me, I know a lot of people love the style - or else you wouldn't be able to buy it in any furniture store. Besides, I am still experimenting with different techniques and styles and I want to learn more about all kinds of paints so this rocking chair became my "shabby chic" victim. Milk paint is a very very cool paint. I like that it is nearly completely environmental friendly (depending on what pigment you use) and that one can make unusual effects with it like spidery cracks and flaky paint. My problem was that one cannot buy ready mixed milk paint powder in this country, of course. So I would have to make it from scratch. It is the protein in milk, casein, which binds pigments to wood and creates the texture of paint and to get casein from milk one can curdle it by using lemon or vinegar which will concentrate the protein. However I was lucky enough to find casein in powdered form in my favorite paint store (www.pigmentim.co.il) so I avoided one messy step. I mixed the casein powder with water, borax and pigments in a 2 day process that I won't describe here. Then I painted two layers of different blues and "erased" paint in certain areas with a damp cloth to create a weathered worn-out look. I wasn't very scientific about it so the end result is perhaps not so "real" - just a nice rocking chair with fake old fading paint. Whilst painting the chair I found a very faded stamp underneath, I traced it onto paper and looked up the word "Malinche, Monterrey" on the wonderful all knowing internet. I found that the chair was from one of the pioneering furniture manufacturers in Mexico which specialized in rocking chairs and chairs of all kinds of woods (pine, mahogany, elm, ceder and beech). They closed down in the early 1970’s but the furniture is still very popular among collectors. After that I found the same rocking chair on a Mexican auction site price: $2,500. Hmm... I had already painted the chair by then and probably lowered the value by doing so, but if the new owner wants, I can restore it back to its former brown glory another day. Click on one picture to make it larger and see the before and after pictures. Caroline: A gift from the family was so badly smothered with dark dark varnish that the beautiful personality of this set of drawers was lost. I removed the varnish by sanding and the lumpy black paint off the drawer knobs by soaking them in vinegar and I found an amazing oak veneer underneath. I would have kept the oak veneer if it had been possible to get all the old varnish out of the wood grain but that proved impossible without damaging the veneer or using a lot of poisonous paint strippers - which I want to avoid. After undoing I then redid the body with 2 different colours of stain. For the drawers themselves I chose teak (a tropical hardwood) and for the body a black walnut stain which is a dark chocolate brown. I also stained the insides of the drawers and dressed the bottom of the drawers with moss green paper covered by a sheet of thick plastic. These can easily be removed so the drawer can be dusted and the plastic can be cleaned. Very practical and looks elegant in my opinion. I love how one now can see the wood grain through the stain, it looks so much more alive. What do you think? Click on a picture below to see full gallery of before and after photos: Caroline: This little white cupboard or bedside table was covered in thick white paint. I removed the paint with my heat gun without wearing enough protection. THAT was a bad idea! The cupboard was probably last painted in the 60's and then it was very popular to put lead in paint. So after an hour of removing paint I had to spend 24 hours in bed with nausea and a head ache. I promise I will not do that again! Then I started redoing it, using an old book of poetry in Hebrew by the Israeli poet Tchernichovsky who is apparently considered to be a great poet - although everyone I have asked disagree. Anyhow the pages looked nice. The inside I painted red to match the sewing table and the door and front of the drawer I kept plain with linseed oil and beeswax - just because I felt there was just a bit too much poetry going on. I found red wheels and new knobs and that was that... sort of. I will not tell you the whole story of getting the right varnish by using 4 different products, have one of them explode in my face and another melt 6 layers of old varnish and nearly destroying the poetry and finally finding a Danish floor varnish (Thank you Scandinavia!) that costs a fortune but is just so perfect. That story would be much too long. I actually like this odd little cupboard. I wasn't so sure about it at first, but the next piece of furniture I redo will be normal and classic - I feel like being more plain. Click on a picture below to see gallery of before and after: Caroline: Some time ago I found a tiny wooden table in terrible shape at the flea market. Even though the wood was soaked in oil and layered with 5 layers of thick white paint, oh and a large crack all down the center - I bought it. I wanted something really cheap and not so nice because I wanted to cut the legs off and make it shorter. With a pretty or nicely designed table it would have hurt too much to put a saw to the legs. The reason I want it shorter, is that it will be my sewing table and the normal height of a table make my shoulders and neck hurt after five minutes of sewing. So first of all I had to remove all the paint and sandpaper for hours, then I decided on matching my little red chair. I kept the legs natural and only oiled them with parboiled linseed oil for that smooth satin texture that I love. Then I painted the top and the inside of the drawer red and the edge black just because I like contrast. In the end I decided on giving the table top that glass effect with 8 layers of high gloss varnish, just because I wanted to see if I could do it. I am probably going to regret it big time, since every tiny dust speck shines like a star in a red sky. But for now I am just please that it turned out so well. For a table of such low quality wood and bad shape I think it turned out very cute. I am very sorry I do not have more pictures of the table before the redoing. Check out the gallery of pictures below:
Poisoning the wood worm beetle
Caroline: You might think I have died or gone to sleep since there have not been much progress with the renovation of furniture or on the blog. However that is not really the case. As I have said before it is very tedious to watch paint dry. And even though a chair might take 7 hours in actual work hours to REDO, if you count the amount of time I spend waiting for paint/glue to dry or trying to find an accessory it can in the end amount to many weeks. On top of that we are having the longest winter, it never stops raining AND my cat just had kittens. If you are frustrated - because I know that you are eagerly waiting for my next art piece :) - then believe me when I tell you that I am EXTREMELY frustrated. Here are some examples of what is going on. Click on a picture below to see enter the gallery of ongoing projects and read about my problems: Caroline
A very good friend of ours gave us this monster. I don't know what to call it because it is not a chest of drawers nor is it a set of cabinets. It is huge and massive. The carpenter was very enthusiastic about making it solid and matching up the grain in the pine wood. Solid means extraordinarily heavy. Therefore - the Monster. I think most Swedes have an aversion to varnished yellow pine wood. In the 70's it was very popular to decorate the whole kitchen with pine wood (see picture below) - just writing about it gives me a panic attack. So due to this emotional distress I had to do something about it. I have other bigger plans for |
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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