Upholstery in
Malvern

Malvern is a genuinely established part of the leafy inner south-east, known for its grand Victorian and Edwardian homes as much as for its shopping strips, and a lot of the furniture behind those front doors has been there a long time. When it finally needs attention, the owners tend to want it done right rather than done fast.

It sits a solid run south of our Eltham North workshop, bordered by Armadale and Toorak on one side and Malvern East on the other, with Caulfield North not far beyond. None of that matters much in practice, because pickup and delivery by arrangement means we come to you, do the work at the bench, and bring the piece home again.

Apartments around the shopping strips bring a different kind of job: smaller pieces, tighter timelines and a brief to match a specific look rather than restore an inherited one. The workshop is set up for that side of things just as much as for the older houses.

Between the period houses and the newer apartment blocks, Malvern furniture spans a wide range: a Victorian-era chair handed down through a family, a dining suite that has seen decades of gatherings, a modern apartment lounge that only needs a fresher cover. That range suits a workshop set up to handle both ends of it under one roof.

On the older pieces we lean toward restoration rather than a straight recover wherever the frame allows it, keeping sound horsehair padding and renewing hessian and webbing properly instead of patching over what is there. On newer furniture the job tends to be more direct: new foam, a fresh cover, a mechanism serviced or replaced.

Either way the approach is the same, strip it back far enough to see what is actually wrong, fix that rather than paper over it, and finish with materials that will hold up to another decade or two of use.

A piece from an older Malvern home has usually already proved its frame can go the distance. What tends to let it down is everything that sits on top of that frame: springs that have sagged, webbing that has given way, foam that has hardened or crumbled, and a cover that has simply worn through in the spots that take the weight.

We rebuild those seats with high-resilience Dunlop foam, 200 density where a seat needs to hold a firm shape or 165 for something softer to sink into, backed by Dunlop's own ten-year warranty. Where a frame was made for it, springs go back nine-way hand-tied, which keeps the seat behaving the way it always has rather than like a new insert dropped into an old shell.

Fabric choice matters as much as the rebuild underneath it. We talk you through weave and wear rating alongside colour, recommending at least 25,000 Martindale rubs for a family sofa and more again with dogs in the house, and the full picture is in our foam guide.

Reupholstery, machining and French polishing all sit under the same Eltham North roof, so a chair that needs its joints re-glued, new springs, fresh padding and a repolished leg does not have to be split across three different tradespeople and three different waits. Together we carry close to a hundred years of trade, fifty years of restoration and French polishing, thirty of machining, twenty two of upholstery.

Hardwood frames we build come with a thirty-year guarantee, and the whole operation is fully insured. Malvern visitors are welcome to come and see the workshop and the fabric range in person, it is a residential address, so just call ahead to make sure someone is there to show you through.

A proper quote accounts for stripping the piece back, repairing any joints, replacing webbing and springs where needed, correct-density foam, and a cover cut and sewn for that specific piece. We price the actual work in front of us, which means we are sometimes the most competitive quote a Malvern homeowner receives and sometimes we are not. When a figure comes in well under what quality materials cost at wholesale, something in that list has usually been left out.