Upholstery & reupholstery
in Rosanna

Rosanna sends us more family heirlooms than almost anywhere else on our books. A chair that belonged to a grandmother, a dining suite handed down through three house moves, a wing chair nobody quite remembers the age of but everybody agrees is not going anywhere. The pattern here is not really about furniture at all. It is about what a family decides is worth keeping.

Just over the railway line in Macleod we see exactly the same thing, which is no surprise since the two suburbs share a lot of the same streets, schools and long settled families. A piece that has sat in a Macleod lounge room for forty years usually turns up here with the same request, make it right again rather than replace it.

The older brick homes around Rosanna station and the shops tend to hold onto their furniture the way they hold onto their gardens, for decades, with real care. That is exactly the kind of piece worth doing properly rather than moving on from.

The furniture that comes in from Rosanna tends to follow a pattern rather than a single story. A dining chair set from a grandparents' house, sound in the frame but worn through on the seat pads. A wing chair reupholstered once before, decades ago, and due again. A hall chair or a piano stool nobody wants to throw out because it has always been there.

Where a piece is genuinely old we treat it as a restoration rather than a straight recover. Horsehair padding is kept and re-carded where it is still sound rather than stripped out and replaced with foam, and hessian and webbing are renewed rather than patched over. It is slower work, and it is the only way to keep an antique an antique.

Families sending us these pieces are usually not shopping around on price. They want to know the piece will last another few decades and go to the next generation in as good a shape as it came to them. That is the job we are set up to do.

Furniture that has survived fifty or sixty years in a family has almost always got good bones. The timber frame under an old wing chair or dining set was built properly in the first place, and it is rarely the reason a piece needs attention. What has usually failed is what is inside and on top, springs that have dropped, webbing that has perished, foam that has gone hard or crumbled, and a cover simply worn through.

We rebuild those seats with Dunlop HR35 foam, 200 density for a firm dining seat or 165 for a softer armchair, backed by a ten year warranty from Dunlop. Where the frame calls for it we re-tie the springs nine ways rather than just replacing them flat, because that is what keeps an old chair feeling the way it always has rather than like a new one wearing an old skin.

Choosing a new cover for an heirloom is its own decision. We talk families through fabric weight and wear rating rather than just pattern, and for a family sofa we recommend at least 25,000 Martindale rubs, more again if there are dogs in the house. The goal is a piece that looks like it belongs in the same room it always has, just able to survive another generation of use.

Upholstery, machining and French polishing happen in the one workshop, so a heirloom chair that needs a re-glued frame, new springs, fresh padding and a polished leg never has to leave our hands or wait on somebody else's schedule. Between the three of us there is around a hundred years of trade, a restorer and French polisher with fifty years behind him, a machinist with thirty, and an upholsterer with twenty two years of his own. Hardwood frames we build carry a thirty year guarantee, and we are fully insured for anything that comes through the door.

Rosanna and Macleod families are welcome to visit and see the workshop and the fabric range in person. It is a residential address in Eltham North, so call ahead and we will make sure someone is free to walk you through it.

Ours covers stripping the piece back to its frame, repairing any joints, renewing webbing and springs, new Dunlop foam where it is needed, and a cover cut and sewn specifically for that piece rather than pulled over the old foundations. We price the work in front of us with proper materials, aiming for a high end finish at a mid tier price, so sometimes our number lands below another quote and sometimes above it. If a quote comes in well under what quality materials cost at wholesale, something in that list has been left out, and we would rather say so upfront than have you find out later.