Upholstery & reupholstery
in North Warrandyte

North Warrandyte sits on the northern bank of the Yarra, directly across the water from the Warrandyte township, and shares a border with Eltham, Research and Kangaroo Ground, with Warrandyte and Wonga Park across the water. It is one of the closest suburbs to our own workshop in Eltham North, which makes it easy to fit a pickup in between other jobs rather than planning a special trip.

The suburb is heavily treed and low density, blocks cut into the bush rather than cleared for a standard house lot, and the homes built on them tend to be older, owner-built or architect-designed rather than volume-built. That kind of house tends to come with furniture chosen the same way: solid, considered pieces bought to last, which is exactly the furniture worth restoring rather than replacing.

Because the drive is short, collecting a piece and returning it is simple to arrange, with less back and forth than suburbs further out. If we collect the piece ourselves, seeing where it sits helps when recommending a fabric.

The furniture a suburb like North Warrandyte tends to hold falls into a few patterns rather than one story: dining chair sets that have lost their springiness or picked up stains over the years, and armchairs and wing chairs that were bought once and are worth a proper recover rather than a second-hand replacement.

Antique and older pieces suit this suburb too: dressers and chairs with show-wood that need French polishing alongside new fabric, and hand-me-down lounges that have been in a family for decades. None of it is unusual work for us, it is simply what a bush suburb full of older, well-kept houses tends to hold onto.

Where a piece has been sitting in a shed or a spare room for a while, we will say plainly whether it is worth restoring before any work starts. Most of the time it is.

Furniture from bush blocks tends to arrive with two issues more than most: sun and dust. Big windows that make the most of a bush outlook also fade fabric unevenly, and a house surrounded by trees and gravel driveways picks up more dust through open windows and doors than a suburban block does, and it works its way into old foam and webbing over the years.

We check the frame first, since older bush block houses often have furniture that has moved house a few times and taken a few knocks along the way. Loose joints get re-glued, sagging webbing is replaced rather than patched, and where the frame calls for it we hand-tie springs using the traditional nine-way method rather than fitting something quicker that will not hold as long.

For the fill we use Dunlop high-resilience foam, 200 density where a seat needs to stay firm and 165 where a softer sit suits the piece, backed by Dunlop's own ten-year warranty. On antiques we keep and re-card the original horsehair where it is still sound rather than stripping it out for the sake of it, because that is part of what makes an old piece worth keeping in the first place.

Upholstery, machining and French polishing all happen under the one roof at Eltham North, so a chair that needs new fabric, a re-glued frame and a polished timber leg does not have to travel between three different workshops. Between the three of us there is around a hundred years in the trade: a restorer and French polisher of fifty years, a machinist of thirty, and an upholsterer of twenty two.

Any hardwood frame we build carries a thirty-year guarantee, we are fully insured, and you are welcome to come and see the workshop and the fabric range in person, it is best to call ahead so we can make time for you properly.

A proper quote accounts for stripping the piece to the frame, repairing any joints, renewing webbing and springs where needed, replacing the foam with a quality high-resilience fill, and only then cutting and fitting the new cover. We price the work in front of us, which means sometimes we are the more affordable quote and sometimes we are not, but a quote that comes in well under the cost of decent materials at wholesale has usually left a step out.