Week 2 in Redfern 107

We have rarely encountered a more enthusiastic bunch of people, the new space was alive with chairs being pulled apart, benches being sanded and planks stained.

Our Reuse Repair Recycle Furniture classes continued this Wednesday with the second week of teaching timber and upholstery skills in our Redfern Workshop space.

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The Group split into two with half focusing on timber, finishing wooden benches and staining timbers ready for next week and the rest of us getting stuck into our upholstery again.

Some people grabbed the larger chairs we started last week and some of us started stripping 3 new metal frame chairs that came into The Bower the day before.

Everyone worked at lightning speed now starting to feel confident with even the most dilapidated of chairs, and before long the gorgeous timber and cane arm chair from last week got it's final sand and we started re-weaving the base with hessian strips and adding coconut fibre to match the back of the chair we had completed the week before.

Maaike focused on the retro armchair and showed us all the special tricks to replace the unusual missing spring with a new one and then tie off the springs before adding a layer of hessian sack ready for padding and the final layers of fabric.

We all decided the old fabric on the metal frame chairs we found the day before was too tatted and damaged to save and set about pulling out all the staples, which takes a little bit of time but with five people pitching in and taking on three chair it was finished in no time at all, and once we had stripped the fabric off the back and seat they were in surprisingly good condition and all that was left was to deciding what look we wanted and what salvaged material we would cover them in next week.

The single old dining chair which started the day with just its springs re sprung, also got a lot of love with every one of us lending a hand to sand the frame and before you could blink - re-web, stuff and cover the back and seat, then add mountains of recycled flock to the seat ready to be squashed down into a plump cushion.

We really can not thank all the participants enough for such an enjoyable day, everyone helping each other and working as one giant team to accomplish vast amounts of work and breath new life into the forgotten chairs, everyone having fun with a smile on their face making reused creations out of 'junk' to last for generations to come.

- Richard

Reuse Repair and Recycle Furniture Course

Workshops, workshops workshops!

We've been hard at work trying to figure out how we can give you what you want!
The second part of the solution involves cloning ourselves, so we'll leave that (and the ethics discussion) for another post, but the first part of the solution is Bower staff getting skilled up in timber repair and finishing ourselves!

To achieve that, and meet some of our other objectives including community education of reuse and repair, we've buddied up with our new best friends - TAFE Outreach.

Outreach at ultimo are dedicated to tailoring courses specifically to meet community needs, providing pathways into social enterprises for people from all walks of life. They're also working with PLACE, a 2 year program concerned with people learning skills towards social enterprises - giving people pathways to employment and financial independence as well as opportunities to socialise and learn new skills.

Over the coming weeks, The Bower staff will be working with TAFE and a TAFE appointed tutor, learning new skills and working with other participants, learning about teaching, mentoring and community engagement.

The aim is for participants to have a taste of furniture restoration and timber work, and for the group to produce a number of pieces that exhibit their new skills, their creativity and passion - all through items donated by The Bower. We hope that some student will discover a true passion for furniture restoration, and that our staff will discover a passion for teaching!

We can't wait for class to resume after the easter holidays, and to show you some of our work in progress.

Once we're skilled up we'll be able to increase the range of workshops we offer to you!