Local & Salvaged Upholstered-Furniture Restoration

Wednesday, August 11th, 2010 | Green @ Home, Green Fashion, Green Goods & Reviews, Green Home Design, Green Home Renovation, Green How To's, Green Interviews & Guest Posts | Sarah Finnie Robinson | 2 Comments

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Nancy Mims

Nancy Mims is a Practically Green Motherboard member who really knows her way around home decor. She’s a co-founder of ModGreenPod, an environmental leader in sustainable and fashionable design. Nancy has a thriving young company, two ingenious children, and a husband who we imagine is exceedingly content. When she told us about her passion for furniture makeovers, we asked her if she’d blog about it for us, and here’s the result, illustrated. Enjoy!

One of the perks of my job is seeing the great “before & after” photos and hearing the accompanying stories that our customers send us when they use our fabric on an upholstery project. It’s so satisfying to see a shabby old piece of furniture not only avoid landfill doom but be completely reinvented with fresh, new fabric through the skills of a local upholsterer. The result is a one-of-a-kind, locally produced piece of art filled with stories and soul.

Chair: Before

All of the upholstered furniture pieces in my house are vintage, and all were lovingly reupholstered and with Mod Green Pod’s organic cotton by my favorite two Austin upholsterers. Last year, when I went through the process of working with the very creative and capable upholsterers at Spruce to recreate the Victorian camelback sofa in my living room, I blogged about each step in hopes that I could demystify the process: http://modgreenpod.blogspot.com/search/label/nancy%27s%20chair. For that project, we salvaged everything that we could from the original piece and sourced the greenest materials we could for whatever needed to be replaced. It remains a great “how to” resource for working with an upholsterer, for those who have never done so.

Detail of restored chair

The most recent piece of furniture in my house is The Anticipate Chair, which Practically Green featured in its rather unfortunate “before” state in late spring: http://blog.practicallygreen.com/2010/05/home-decorating-with-ec-friendly-wallpaper-fabric/.

Seeing beyond the tattered brown exterior, I instantly loved the shape of the chair the second I spotted it at Room Service, my favorite vintage shop in my neighborhood. I‘ve learned from most upholsterers that furniture that predates the 1970s is usually built really well and can withstand much more time if properly refurbished. So I could see that it would make a gorgeous statement for a new pattern I had designed, Anticipate https://modgreenpod.com/item/52/. I selected a lush but neutral medium grey for the ground color and a pop of citrus yellow for the center of the cream colored swirling motif. I had the opposite colors printed for a contrasting throw pillow. (For more information about ordering Mod Green Pod’s fabrics in custom colors, click here: https://modgreenpod.com/tep-user/i/customguidelines.pdf and contact us.)

"Anticipate" chair: after makeover

I delivered the chair to Sabrina at Under Cover Upholstery in Austin, and she measured and told me how much fabric to order. When the fabric was ready, I delivered it and she and I discussed the basic orientation of the pattern. Like most upholsterers, she had worked with a huge variety of prints and had great ideas about how the fabric should be laid out. A few weeks later, the chair was ready and WOW, did it exceed my expectations. Even Sabrina was stunned by how well it turned out. It’s really amazing to look back at the “before” photo; I can’t even believe it’s the same chair.