Upholstery & reupholstery
in Lower Plenty

One Lower Plenty household is the biggest private, non-trade customer on our books. Over time we have built custom furniture for the house and recovered brand-new couches in fabric specified for the room they sit in, rather than whatever the couch happened to arrive in. We will not name the household, but the pattern of work says a lot about what Lower Plenty tends to want.

It is a suburb of bigger blocks and established homes, and the furniture requests that come out of it reflect that: less about patching up what is worn, more about getting a piece exactly right for a particular room, whether that is a new sofa recovered to match a colour scheme or a bench seat built to a measurement that does not exist off the shelf.

That kind of work needs the same trades in the one place, so a custom frame, its upholstery and any timber finishing can all happen without the piece leaving our hands.

The largest ongoing relationship we have with a private customer is a Lower Plenty household. We have built custom furniture for their house over time and recovered new couches for them, not because the couches were worn, but because the fabric had to be specified for the room they were going into rather than picked from whatever the manufacturer offered.

That is a different kind of job to most reupholstery. Instead of stripping back something tired, we start from a new piece of furniture, or a frame we have built ourselves, and match the cover to a colour scheme, a room, or a brief the customer already has in mind. The fabric choice matters more here than the wear it needs to survive.

We are careful never to name customers or their homes, but this relationship is the clearest example we have of what custom, made-to-measure work looks like once it becomes an ongoing thing rather than a one-off job.

For custom pieces, the first question is fit: a bed head, ottoman, window seat or bench cushion built to the exact measurement of the space, rather than a standard size squeezed in. We build the frame in-house, so the timber, the padding and the cover are all planned together from the start.

For a brand-new couch being recovered to match a room, the foam and springs are chosen the same way we would for any lounge: Dunlop HR35, softer at 165 density where the room wants a gentler feel or 200 where firmer support is needed, and nine-way hand-tied springs where the frame calls for it. The fabric decision, though, is driven by the room rather than by wear and tear.

Where a piece will see everyday family use, we still recommend at least 25,000 Martindale rubs for durability, more like 30,000 or above with pets in the house, even when the fabric has been chosen primarily for its look. There is more in our pet-friendly and kid-proof fabric guide.

Custom furniture only works well when the person building the frame, the person upholstering it and the person finishing the timber are talking to each other, which is easier when all three trades sit in the one Eltham North workshop. The three trades that make custom furniture possible share that workshop: a restorer and French polisher of fifty years standing, a machinist of thirty, and an upholsterer of twenty-two, roughly a century of combined experience.

Every hardwood frame leaving the workshop carries a thirty-year guarantee, and the workshop itself is fully insured. Lower Plenty customers are welcome to visit the workshop and see fabric in person before committing to a custom piece, it is a residential address so a call ahead helps us set aside time properly.

Our quote for a custom piece covers the frame build, the foam and springs, and a cover cut and sewn specifically for that piece, plus the fabric itself once you have chosen it. For a new couch being recovered, it covers stripping the original cover, fitting the new one to the existing frame, and matching it to the brief you have given us for the room. The number reflects the work and the materials, not a race to be the lowest bidder, which is how you get a high-end result without a high-end price tag. A quote far below what good materials cost at wholesale is a sign something in the build has been left out.