The Sewing Place
The Emporia => House Beautiful => Topic started by: Flobear on October 30, 2021, 11:49:09 AM
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My G Plan dining chairs and table, that I obtained second-hand in 1976, have given sterling service over the years but the chairs in particular need some love and some new clothes.
I've seen seat fabric in Doughty's but I presume the padding underneath will need replacing too by now and I expect I'll need to buy online. The upholstery is not a difficult task and I have done a little in the past but had an upholstery supplies shop 3 miles down the road where I lived before.
Any suggestions of where to obtain supplies online would be welcome.
The main problem for me is what to do with the wooden frames. They are polished (not shiny) wood - teak, I think - and in some parts look faded or have had things dropped on them which has taken colour out. I am happy to bingle and see what I can find out but, if anyone with some experience can offer advice, I like to get it from real people!
Many thanks, dear TSPers, for reading my ramble.
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Lakeland orange oil is good for improving the appearance of teak. https://www.lakeland.co.uk/25871/Lakeland-Orange-Oil-Wood-Furniture-Polish-500ml (https://www.lakeland.co.uk/25871/Lakeland-Orange-Oil-Wood-Furniture-Polish-500ml)
It smells good too!
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I am an avid watcher of The Repair Shop particularly at the moment as I am abut to clean up an old Victorian/Edwardian treadle wooden table top and cover, and according to Will Kirk he uses a mixture of equal quantities of Turpentine, Methylated Spirit, White Vinegar and Linseed oil, and uses a white cloth to apply this, and says you can see the black/grey on the cloth, but it if goes brown/yellow then you are taking of the varnish if any. Helen Howes also recommended that I use something called Danish Oil, whereas Will Kirk uses beeswax. Both Helen Howes and Will Kirk use the very finest wire wool which is grade 0000.
If you go into Google and type in Will Kirk cleaning wood you should then find a You Tube link where he mentions this cleaning solution - thanks to Charley on TSP for giving me this link.
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I did much the same a couple of years ago, but on newer chairs that had been sold as leather-seated but weren't. There is a good video of how to attach this kind of job here, which I found very helpful:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0GjPZaBtI4
You need a fabric with a very high Martindale number (rub count) otherwise you'll be doing the job again in a couple of years!
I used this supplier for the foam pads.
https://upholsterywarehouse.co.uk/search?type=product&q=foam
I got the pre-cut ones (but watch the video above before buying - you need them oversized). This site will also sell you the polyester wadding that needs to go between the top fabric and the foam to prevent abrasion happening between the two.
You also need a decent staple gun and plenty of staples, and a staple remover, of course.
The wood can be easily revived by sanding with fine-guage sandpaper and revarnishing.
However, if you want a streak-free finish you might be better sending the frames to your local furniture restorer - we have one that goes by the name '...French Polishing' but offers a complete furniture refurbishment (and cabinetmaking) service. They've revived a 1920's oak barley-twist leg dining table and a 1950's G-Plan bureau for us. Not bargain-basement prices but cheaper than buying similar quality new.
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Oh, I wish I lived next door so I could help! This is a project I could sink my teeth into.
Without seeing the chairs, it's hard to say what will give a finish you'd be pleased with. Trying orange or lemon oil may help, but chances are after almost 50 years of use, a refinish is probably warranted.
Busted to Buff, Dashner Design and a few others are excellent YouTube sources. If any of the joints are loose, they will need re-gluing.
The seats are probably foam over plywood or hardboard. I have a "go to" solution for seating foam I've used for years. I use 1/2" carpet padding, readily available at DIY hardware stores.The foam is much more resilient than a lot of seating foam - "resilience" is how well the foam recovers once it is squished/compressed. Since it's only 1/2" thick , I simply cut and use as many layers as I need. I just stack them on the seat, I've never bothered gluing them together. I started down this path because foam is a 20 mile drive to downtown (one way) and carpet padding is a 3 mile drive to the DIY store. But ever since, I prefer the carpet padding for dining type chair seats.
As far as choosing an upholstery, the rub count is usually on the tag, but I've pulled $5/HD pieces out of clearance bins that have held up great. The only rule I can think of is this: the thinner the fabric, the tighter the weave needs to be. Basically, don't grab drapery fabric by mistake, though some of it will work too.
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Thank you @Esme866 :D
The wood finish does want a bit of a spruce up although, having had no children, it's not too bad considering the age. On one chair some glueing is required.
When I saw the fabrics that I fell for, I saw something that I thought was Macron numbers and wondered where a French President came into it! Chap serving at the counter kindly put me right :P
Not sure if the photos help at all but they can count as 'Before' !
(https://i.imgur.com/fhOHhkD.jpg)
(https://i.imgur.com/obQbUbi.jpg)
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Thank you @Esme866 :D
The wood finish does want a bit of a spruce up although, having had no children, it's not too bad considering the age. On one chair some glueing is required.
When I saw the fabrics that I fell for, I saw something about Macron numbers and wondered where a French President came into it! Chap serving at the counter kindly put me in the picture :P
Not sure if the photos help at all but they can count as 'Before' !
(https://i.imgur.com/fhOHhkD.jpg)
(https://i.imgur.com/obQbUbi.jpg)
I have four of the exact same chairs! Mine are covered in a blue velvety fabric :)
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@Flobear and @Lilian I LOVE those chairs! I keep a lookout on Craigslist here locally for anything similar but availability and my pocketbook never seem to match up at the same time. I did buy a teak buffet several years back in the same 70's contemporary, but I've yet to get the table and chairs.
Flobear, the finish does still look very good on your chairs. I lucked into a lone Scandinavian designed chair (has the designer/architects name stamped on it)for $12 several years back in similar condition. I use it at my dressing table. I simply touched it up with furniture repair markers and then oiled it. It looked great except my cat at the time for some reason began "attacking" the arms. It was his new favorite wrestling buddy and it had several teeth marks within a few days. Filled those, touched up and then applied two coats of wipe on polyurethane. The poly turns a bit amber as it ages, the same way shellac and varnish do. Its held up great. (And for some reason, once it was poly'd, cat never bothered it again).
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@Flobear that is very minimal damage to the finish. Here I would be suggesting Howard's Restor a finish. It is available in the UK. Most antique dealers have sword by the stuff for decades. I've used it since the mid 70's. It comes in 9 shades. Excellent for removing water damage. One thing with any of the oil and solvent based restorers is let the product dry/cure before you do the upholstery or sit on it. If you don't it will wick into the cushion and your clothes. This is true even of the orange oil some others have suggested. Mostly we use those products on table tops and the sides of furniture cabinetry so it can be a surprise when you get it on your clothes.
For the reglueing do use a wood glue. I would suggest one designed for chairs. They are marvelous. I have one from Lee Valley Tools that you inject with a provided needle into the space of the chair rung then clamp or tighten into place and let it cure. It goes into the end grain of the rung and causes it to expand then cures giving it a very snug fit.
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Hi jacking this thread slightly, sorry @Flobear , can anyone suggest a way to get those white watermarks of a nest of tables?
I inherited these from my mum and the are very useful and fit where I use them but years of kids and now kids have taken their toll.
I don’t know what wood the are but it is fairly light. I know I could sand them back but then DH would take over, make a very good job but then would moan for ages about how much time he had to spend on them and bore me rigid when he explained for the nth time what he had to do.
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@Ellabella I've used mayonnaise before and it did work
https://youtu.be/HLWyIltiqxk
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@Ellabella , the Howard's Restor a Finish I mentioned earlier is what 8 out of 10 antiques dealers would use. It's quick, simple, yields fantastic results and is available in the UK. Or ask at a big box hardware/ home improvement store for that or a similar product. There is seldom a need to actually refinish a table top just for water marks.
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I did make a big improvement to water marks on a pine dresser with a hair dryer. I don't know how it works but it did.
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I once got white marks out of a French polished table by rubbing it with Brasso!
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I've never tried it and wouldn't have the wherewithal, but I read once that if you rub in cigarette ash and polish it off with a dry cloth that should fix it.
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Hi jacking this thread slightly, sorry @Flobear , can anyone suggest a way to get those white watermarks of a nest of tables?
I inherited these from my mum and the are very useful and fit where I use them but years of kids and now kids have taken their toll.
I don’t know what wood the are but it is fairly light. I know I could sand them back but then DH would take over, make a very good job but then would moan for ages about how much time he had to spend on them and bore me rigid when he explained for the nth time what he had to do.
Most welcome @Ellabella. In fact there is the most horrendous watermark on the matching table because I once kept a plant pot on there on a pot saucer that turned out to be porous :boohoo: As the table had a cloth on, it was quite some time before I noticed any problem.
Thank you so much to those who have contributed such excellent suggestions. I agree that the wood is in fairly good nick for the age of the chairs, that's why I want to improve it sympathetically and not try and cover it with anything varnishy.
I love the simple style of those chairs too @Esme866 and @Lilian. I've had them so long that they've probably stopped being plain 'old-fahioned' and would be labelled 'retro' or even 'vintage' now ;)
Can't wait to get started!
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I would try Will Kirk's mixture on one chair @Flobear, then buff it up with a bit of wax polish, and see if you like the result?
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My mom has a dining table and a coffee table, both purchased new in the 90's, from different manufacturers, that started to get light watermarks a few years ago. The marks actually form very quickly, such as condensation from the bottom of an empty ice cream bowl - moved 15 minutes later. This did not happen when the tables were new. I knew polyurethane wouldn't do this, so I did some research.
I had noticed many furniture flippers on YouTube using a spray on laquer instead of polyurethane because it dries so much faster and does not require as much time to cure. At home polyurethane needs two weeks to cure, in a factory, it goes into a low humidity/higher temperature drying booth to cure for several hours. Lacquer does not require so much additional time. So most manufacturers switched to lacquer.
But eventually, the lacquer crazes into thousands of tiny microscopic cracks which allows the moisture to wick up underneath it- causing the white/light marks. (On older furniture, white marks are typically the result of moisture absorption into/under wax or polish buildup.
I have successfully touched up the areas with markers. Were it my furniture, I would give it a light sanding and wipe on 2-3 coats of polyurethane. Some Youtubers claim this doesn't work, and the lacquer will still pop off and continue to crack. But my parents are in their 80's, this only needs to last a few years. I would just like to prevent something from getting left long enough to blacken the actual wood. However as my mother isn't physically able to do things herself, she becomes infuriated when I offer to do anything aesthetic. If I can do it behind her back, she is grateful afterwards. (I just can't figure out a way to hide those tables for two weeks! :thinking:)
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I am a fan of Danish Oil it has shellac in it and I have never had problems with moisture damage. I applied danish Oil to the wooden panelling in the hallway, many years ago now, and even when the wet dog shook himself after a rainy walk it never damaged the wood. :)
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I've had them so long that they've probably stopped being plain 'old-fahioned' and would be labelled 'retro' or even 'vintage' now ;)
Can't wait to get started!
Classed as 'mid-century' now and getting fashionable and sought after.
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I did a search for the same chairs and seen them fetching £380 or more for four refurbished chairs :faints:
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Wow! @Lilian.
I've discovered a container of Bald's furniture balm for light wood that I'd completely forgotten buying from Lakeland. Not sure teak finish is light, but neither is it dark :[ Any'ow, I plan to try it out on a pine cupboard to see what happens.
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I've not seen Bald's wood balm so I just watched a video on their site. Apparently it takes out white ring marks and nourishes the wood :) I have something similar I think, I will have to sort it out, I have a teak drop-leaf dining table in the cupboard with rings marks on it. Hope it does the job for you :)
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A French Polisher once told me to hover a warm iron over the mark on my table, I suppose similar to @Ploshkin hairdryer method, but i never dared try it. I bought some Colron ring remover (https://www.colron.co.uk/products/furniture-repair/ring-remover/) and that worked.
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My dad is a French polisher and I have worked with him many times over the years…. I have seen him use every one of the cures mentioned in this thread, and the correct one to use differs from piece to piece, depending upon the wood and the existing finish on it.
Only experience will tell you which is the best, but to learn that means having a go and seeing what happens.
A quick test he used at times was to just wipe the damage with a wet cloth to see how badly worn the current polish/lacquer is. How it looks damp is a fair representation of how it’d look re lacquered if you just gave a couple of coats of polish over the existing finish, and can help to let you know if you can get away with a quick refresher coat. Let it dry for a couple of hours before doing any work though.
The hair dryer thing works on some white marks but not others, depending on the cause. French polishers call the white marks ‘bloom’, and it’s basically moisture in the wood that is pulled out by the heat of something put on top of the table. If you’re lucky and apply just enough heat you can sometimes persuade the bloom to vanish - although I have no idea if it goes back into the wood or evaporates.
Like a lot have said here, teak does tend to respond well to a quick rub with oil, so that is where I would look first if I were you.
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Thanks for that very useful insight @Gavin e .
I needed a nudge to get started :thumb: