I’ve been given a little upholstered stool that used to be in my great grandparents’ house. As far as I know, that’s all we have from them except pictures and a wedding ring - my uncle gave it to me because I’d been saying it isn’t fair that other people have all this family *stuff[/] and we got bupkis. It’s in pretty bad shape - structurally sound, but the leather top has completely deteriorated and the finish looks pretty awful. It has wooden legs stained dark (don’t know what species) and brass tacks around a formerly leather-upholstered padded top. Probably, I dunno, late Victorian.
So, I’m assuming what I’ll have to do is take the tacks out (will they be reusable? Is there a tool?) take everything off down to bare wood, strip it, sand it, restain it, and reupholster? What kind of stain should I use? Anything I should know?
I get the Van Dyke’s catalog, but frankly it’s a little overwhelming! So many cool things! Is there a good book on this kind of project?
i am actually whimpering at the thought of someone deliberately stripping the finish on an antique …
See, this one chair I saw at a friends house was a very classic victorian green stained walnut and shellac’ed chair. Beautiful condition except for the leather seat. They had pictures of it, as it had been around a long time. Then one lovely day they decided to replace the leather with new leather, and ended up stripping it, bleaching it and staining it honey oak, and gloss polyeurethaning it.
According to antiques roadshow if they hadnt touched it other than to replace the leather it would have been about $3000. After the stripping and all, $100.
Please get someones actual hands on visual impression of it before you perhaps thrash it for all times?
First, please sign the attached waiver that states you won’t hold any of us responsible when you follow our suggestions then take the stool to Antiques Roadshow, where you’ll be told it WOULD have been worth $750,000 but is now worth only 2¢ because you refinished it and removed the original upholstery.
We had a number of pieces of furniture that had old, yicky, darkened finish. We used a product called Homer Formby’s Furniture Refinisher, which kind of dissolved and cleaned the gunk, but didn’t strip the finish. It was way easier than stripping, sanding, staining, and varnishing. A little bit of Googling leads me to believe that there are “house brand” furniture refinishers at some of the big box hardware/home repair stores that are cheaper than Homer Formby.
If the upholstery was tufted (you know, where the folds make a pattern and are held in place by buttons) or it has springs, you might want to have a professional reupholster it, if you’ve never done upholstery before. It ain’t rocket surgery, by any means, and any do-it-yourself upholstery book will help you, but if you don’t like fabric projects that involve precision, upholstery may drive you nuts. It does me.
A tack hammer usually has a tack puller on it. You may be able to reuse the tacks you remove, or you may end up wrecking some, and then you’ve got the challenge of finding matching tacks or just saying “The hell with it” and getting all new tacks.
I hope you’ll take before and after pics and share them! And don’t let aruvqan freak you out. It’s your footstool. If retaining whatever antique value it has is important to you, don’t touch it. If having a functional and attractive piece of sentimental furniture is what you want, go for it.
Here’s another vote for Homer Formby’s…my father used it to clean up an old mirror frame. It turns out that there was some rather nice paintwork on the frame that was covered in years of gunk.
In some cases, however, the finish just isn’t salvagable if you’re going to keep the piece in a living area; for example, my mother inherited a pie safe that had many, many layers of green and blue paint (event on the hand-punched tin vents!!). We stripped that piece; unfortunately, the stripping chemical of choice at that time darked the tin. I think it’s gorgeous; I’ll post pictures if you like.
Are you familiar with “The Furniture Guys”? They used to have a show on TLC, and they did lots of re-upholstering. It might not hurt to check out a few episodes.
It does not have major worth. Even if it did, so the hell what? We’re not going to sell it! Right now it is not a useful piece of furniture - the leather is completely deteriorated, and the legs are all scraped up. For it to be a piece of furniture we can use and enjoy, something has to be done - at the very least, the tacks need to be pulled and the leather replaced. I don’t want to change the character of the stool, just fix it.
I also noticed that the joints are a little bit loose. What can I do about that?
It isn’t tufted or anything - I’d think it would be as easy as redoing a dining room chair except that there’s some sort of fabric layer under the leather layer that’s nailed down, and under that I don’t know what kind of stuffing there is. I guess I can just replicate exactly how they did it, but I’m a little concerned about getting the stuffing right - it’s one of those “hard” little stools. I’m also concerned about finishing the leather off - it’s a little odd, I’d assume they stretched it, tacked it, and trimmed it right below the tacks, but now that I’ve pried some of the tacks off with one of those itty bitty pocket size crowbars (and god my hands hurt) it looks like the leather just stops a few milimeters below the spike of the tack - I’m worried my edges will look sloppy. But maybe it shrunk? I assume they put it on wet?
And I’ll need a source for red leather upholstery that doesn’t cost an arm and a leg, I guess.
I’d forgotten about the Furniture Guys - they were like the Click and Clack of the furniture world.
ETA - I tried that refinishing stuff - did two of the legs, I’ll take a look at it tomorrow. (I’m concerned about the scrapes and such - if they look okay, I’m fine with it.) I started to get a wicked-ass fume headache, though. When I worked in a paper conservation lab we had to use the fume hoods with tolulene - this can’t really be safe for my brain, can it?
do you know any hunters? they tend to have a lot of leather hanging around. how big is the item?
usually really old well done things have a muslin layer, horse hair/ stuffing layer, then some sort of spring thing. if the muslin layer is good, i wouldn’t go any further into the inner works.
the easiest thing is to use the old fabric as a pattern for the new fabric, give it about a quarter inch extra around for the new stuff. i wouldn’t think they would put it on wet. just stretched really well as they tacked.
That’s exactly what it has, except for there aren’t any springs - it’s leather, muslin, batting, horsehair, batting, and plywood. I took the muslin off although I was considering just leaving it be, because 1) when I smack it dust billows out like I dropped an atomic bomb on it, and 2) on the last damned tack I ripped the muslin. I’m considering keeping everything below the muslin layer, because a brief Google search reveals, well, my thread on it first, and then it reveals no horsehair suppliers. I do know some actual horses, but I’m not sure I could get as good results as currently exists. I’m going to try giving it a good vacuuming, though. I know at some point it may have gotten wet, as I only got the thing because my uncle was cleaning his garage out after it flooded and I just don’t think mold spores make a nice Mother’s Day present.
