Upholstery & reupholstery
in Balwyn

Balwyn is one of the suburbs where no two weeks look the same on our bench. One week it is a pair of wingback chairs from a period home, the next it is a set of dining chairs, then a recliner that has lost its lift, then an old armchair somebody's grandmother owned. That variety is honestly how most of our Balwyn work arrives, a real mix rather than one type of job over and over.

Part of that comes down to the housing itself. Balwyn runs from older weatherboard and brick homes near the shops to grander period houses on wider blocks further out, and the furniture inside reflects that spread: some of it inherited, some bought new and simply worn out, some picked up secondhand and needing a proper going over before it earns a place in the lounge room.

We do not mind that variety. Upholstery, machining and French polishing under the one roof in Eltham North means whatever turns up, a Chesterfield needing new springs, a dining set needing recovering, a recliner needing its mechanism looked at, it can all be handled without sending pieces out to different workshops.

Ask us what a typical Balwyn job looks like and the honest answer is that there is not one. Lounges come in for a full recover when the frame underneath is still sound. Dining chairs come in a handful at a time, usually because the seat pads have gone hard or split at a corner. Recliners come in when the mechanism has started to stick or the foam has collapsed. Antiques come in needing horsehair kept and re-carded, hessian and webbing replaced properly rather than patched over.

Custom work turns up too: an ottoman built to sit at the end of a bed, a window seat cushion made to fit a specific bay, a bed head built from scratch to a size that off-the-shelf furniture does not cover. None of it is unusual work for us, it is just rarely the same request twice in a row from this suburb.

That mix suits a workshop set up the way ours is, because a job does not have to fit a template to be worth doing properly.

A good number of the pieces that reach us from Balwyn are structurally fine and cosmetically tired: a hardwood frame with plenty of life left, sitting under foam that has gone soft and a cover that has worn through at the arms. That is the easiest and most satisfying job to do properly, strip it back, rebuild the seat in Dunlop HR35 foam at 200 density for a firm seat or 165 for something softer, and put on a cover that is cut and sewn to the piece rather than stretched over what is already there.

Recliners are their own category. The upholstery usually wears out well before the mechanism does, manual or electric, so we recover the chair and service the mechanism at the same visit rather than treating them as two separate jobs.

Where a piece has gone the leather route and started to peel or flake, it has almost always been a bonded or PU leather rather than the real thing, and the frame underneath is usually still sound. Leather is sold by the whole hide, so for one cushion or a small repair a close-match vinyl is often the sensible call rather than buying a full hide for a patch. We will tell you plainly which makes sense for the piece in front of us.

The three of us bring close to a century of hands-on experience to the bench between us: a restorer and French polisher who has been at it for fifty years, a machinist with thirty behind him, and an upholsterer with twenty-two. Because upholstery, machining and French polishing all happen under the one Eltham North roof, a Balwyn chair needing a re-glued frame, new springs and a polished show-wood leg is not waiting on three separate appointments in three separate places.

Where a frame calls for it we hand-tie springs nine ways, where webbing suits the piece better, we web it properly. Hardwood frames we build carry a thirty-year guarantee, we are fully insured, and Balwyn customers are welcome to come and see the workshop and look at fabric in person. It is a residential address, so a quick call first helps us have things ready.

Our quote covers stripping the piece back to its frame, repairing any joints, replacing webbing and springs that have had their day, new Dunlop foam, and a cover cut and sewn properly to the piece. We price the work in front of us with quality materials, aiming for a high-end finish at a fair, mid-tier price, so sometimes we come in above another quote and sometimes below it. If a quote is well under what good foam, springs and fabric cost at wholesale, something in that list has been left out, and we will say so plainly if you ask us to look at it.