Upholstery in
Ivanhoe

A lot of what comes to us from Ivanhoe is furniture that has been in the family longer than the current owner has lived in the house. Dining suites, wing chairs, a grandmother's chaise, the kind of piece nobody wants to see go to the tip because a replacement would never match what it already has. The people who send us this work are not chasing the lowest quote. They want the piece put back to something they can actually sit on and pass down again, done properly rather than quickly.

That focus on quality over speed shapes how we approach every Ivanhoe job. If a frame needs re-gluing before it takes new springs, we re-glue it rather than screw a fix over the top. If the timber show-wood has lost its shine, French polishing happens on the bench next to the upholstery, not sent out to someone else and back. Keeping every trade under the one roof means the finished piece looks and feels of one piece, not three separate repairs bolted together.

Ivanhoe also gives us a good mix of the straightforward alongside the antique work: dining chairs that need new pads, a lounge that has simply worn through in the usual spots. Not everything that comes out of an Ivanhoe home is a hundred years old, but the standard people expect stays the same either way.

Most of the antique pieces that come out of Ivanhoe get the same treatment. If the horsehair inside a chair or chaise is still sound, we keep it, pull it out, card it back into shape and put it back rather than stripping it for foam. It costs more in labour than starting fresh with synthetics, but it is what keeps a period piece period-correct, and it is usually what the owner actually asked for.

Underneath, tired hessian and stretched webbing do not get patched. They come out completely and go back in new, because a patch on old webbing is a job that fails again within a year and undoes the rest of the work. Where the frame calls for it, springs are hand tied in the traditional nine-way pattern rather than sitting on a foam base, which is the difference between a seat that holds its shape for decades and one that sags again inside a few years.

The French polishing side of an Ivanhoe job is often just as involved as the upholstery. Show-wood arms, legs and carved details get stripped back, filled where needed and built back up in shellac by hand, which is slower than a sprayed lacquer finish but the only way to keep an antique looking like an antique rather than a reproduction.

The most common problem with an older Ivanhoe piece is not damage, it is age. Timber has dried and dulled, glue joints have loosened from decades of use, and the springs or webbing underneath have simply given up holding their shape. None of that means the piece is beyond saving. It means it needs the structural work done first, properly, before a new cover goes anywhere near it.

We strip a piece back to its frame before we quote what it actually needs, not what it looks like it needs from a photo of the cover. That is when we find out whether the horsehair is worth keeping, whether the frame joints need re-gluing, and whether springs or webbing suit the piece better. Fixing the visible cover without fixing what is underneath is the fastest way to end up doing the same job again in a year or two.

For dining chairs and everyday lounges the fix is simpler: new Dunlop HR35 foam at the density the piece needs, firm or soft, fresh webbing where it suits, and a cover in a fabric chosen to handle a family home. We recommend at least 25,000 Martindale rubs for a family sofa and more again where there are dogs in the house, and there is more detail in our guide to pet and kid friendly fabric.

The restorer and French polisher on our bench has fifty years in the trade, the machinist thirty, and the upholsterer twenty two, call it a century of combined experience across the three of us, all working from the one Eltham North workshop. That matters for Ivanhoe's antique work especially, because a chair does not have to leave the building between its frame repair, its French polish and its new cover.

Every hardwood frame we build carries a thirty year guarantee on the frame itself, we are fully insured, and Ivanhoe customers are welcome to come and see the workshop and look through fabric in person. It is a residential address, so it is best to call ahead first.

Our quote covers stripping the piece back, repairing the frame, deciding honestly whether the existing horsehair, hessian and webbing are worth keeping or replacing, new Dunlop foam where it is needed, and a cover cut and sewn to the piece. That is proper restoration, not a quick recover, and it is priced at what quality materials and the extra hours actually cost. A quote well under that has usually left one of those steps out.