Graduation Night at Shed 107

Tuesday was a long day for Curb Collective! We rushed faster than ever to finish all our chairs in time for the graduation night on Tuesday evening and for the Finders Keepers market this weekend.

Sam and I sanded and painted two dining chairs on which we will put the butterfly cushions the group made last semester. You could feel our stress of not finishing on time, but we made it! Stuart and Mick finished another dining chair with the help of Maaike and Jeanette - one of the brightest of our collection: it's orange and red!

Miki and Dominique tried as hard as they could to finish the pair of yellow and pink chairs started at the Newtown festival, but unfortunately they would have needed more time as they refused to sacrifice quality to rapidity... You'll therefore be able to see them next term! They will be great as first pieces of the new collection!

Some students stayed after the class to set up everything for the Graduation Night. We were hugely proud and excited: our furniture looks so different when they are on platforms!

A big BRAVO to Maaike and Richard who created an amazing screen out of wooden doors found at The Bower, where they displayed pictures of the transformation of the furniture. This new way to raise awareness about reuse impressed everybody, and our only problem with it will be to prevent people from buying it at the market!

The Graduation Night was a great success. 5 different courses from TAFE Outreach graduated, among them our Shed neighbours WEAVE's construction and repair students who did an amazing job patching, fixing, organising and painting the shed and Hobo Gro who create vertical gardens in reused palettes, and, of course, Curb Collective!

And guess what? We already sold 5 pieces of furniture!!! So come as soon as you can to the Finders Keepers market on Friday and Saturday if you want to admire/buy our work, the furniture won't stay there for a long time!

 - Claire M -

The Home Stretch

With only 3 more classes before Curb collective graduate and show off their debut collection at Finders Keepers, there was no messing around this week!

Pete got stuck into a second coat of choc-walnut stain on the dining suite. Mark elected to start a brand new project, taking on the challenge of the 'mummy chairs' it took 4 hours for Mark, Sam and Sam to strip just one of these uglies back to basics. They won't be recogniseable when the group are finished with them though!

Jeanette and Jane chose a lovely red jaquard for an occasional chair - all Jeanette's research on upholstery is obviously paying off!

Fiona got a lesson in measuring and mitring timber from Cathy, using a length of old skirting board that provided just the right channel for her latest project - a perspex topped coffee table.

 Speaking of tables, This table was donated to The Bower with the top raw and unfinished. We took it to Curb Collective to see what they could do.

In between classes, Lesley tightened the legs and applied widths of walnut laminate to the top, she added a few coats of diluted timber stain to make the top match the legs and now it's ready for resale!

Finished with the table, Lesley joined Min and our newest collectee Tanh; applying the patchwork of fabric swatches to the plantation chair. The group learned how to cut templates on the fly, to fold, roll, niggle and tweak until the edges can be tidily tacked into place.

Next week we'll put the back on and our two big upholstery projects will be complete!

Miki and Claire were determined to finish their duck egg blue timber arm chair - but not at the expense of perfection! The pair worked very hard to match their stripes and make their final stitches invisible.

We stayed back for 20 minutes in the end, so determined were we to finish the chair!And voila!

 You can't appreciate the delicate blue/lemon stripe on the back of this chair from a photo - you'll have to come and see us at finders keepers. Here's a peek at other things you'll see if you stop by the Curb Collective stall on the 2nd or 3rd of December;

 

All proceeds from the sale of restored items will restock our shelves with paint, glue, laquer, needles and thread so we can keep flying the reuse flag in the city of Sydney.

sanding 101

TAFE Week 7 : A lot of woodwork!

This week was Phil's last time with us, so we decided to learn as much as we could from him before his leaving.

We got done to the job of salvaging a set of six chairs whose upholstery had been done last term. Some of them were broken: would we buy new parts to fix the ones being unusable, or would we take the good parts from other chairs and mix them up to have a smaller set? After a lot of talks, we decided that we preferred to stick to the “reuse and repair” ethos and to have 4 or 5 beautiful chairs, rather than buying new parts to have a correct set of 6.

Once this important decision was made, it was time to set to work! We dismantled the chairs, took the good parts from the bad ones to replace the bad parts of the good ones. It happened to be tricky for some bits as they were glued together, so Phil showed us how to do so with pieces of wood and a mallet.

And then you have... A lot of wood parts!

After that, now that we had the parts we wanted to use, we had to sand all the chairs/parts of chairs... which wasn't to everyone's liking: look at Miki's horrified face!

We formed pairs and triplets to quickly sand the set, and we happily realised that sanding those chairs was far easier than sanding the other ones we had done some weeks ago. 

Thanks a lot for all you taught us, Phil! Everything we learnt from you was very interesting and instructive!

- Fiona & Claire

Reuse Fabric Upholstery

107 : the place where the sun shines even when it’s raining outside!

Yesterday, Maaike started the course with a lesson: Phil had brought seats from home, and Maaike took this opportunity to teach us how to cover a seat cushion with some striped fabric, to show us how to watch out for pattern distortion. The secret? To smooth the cloth carefully, without pulling too much on it, and to take one's time, not hesitating to reposition staples.

To finish the cushion properly, we learnt how to put a dust cover under it to avoid the dirt from going in the chair. 

It was then time to take care of a chair we've all had a hand on to finalise it. The fabric chosen was some black velvet, and the tricky part was to fix it getting around its legs on the corners. It was not easy as we had to cover all the Dacron, but to leave the wood apparent. After having cut the excess of fabric, we put tackles on it so that it doesn’t move, and then we sew the two pieces of fabric with a curved needle. 

After that, each of us went on to other projects. Look at the armchair I filled with Glen: we first put coconut fibre until we cannot feel the springs anymore, then some flock to smooth it, and finally we covered everything with some Dacron to suppress the last bumps.

It was about time for the final test: sitting on it!

 
After the habitual feast, Miki and Peter went on with the gorgeous sunny yellow chairs we had started last week, using the curved needle tips Maaike had just taught us.

HURRAY! One of them is almost finished! 

With the black velvet one and the red stalls painted last week, our efforts start to bear fruits and we are prouder than ever of our projects!

 

- Claire M 

And Then Came Colour

Another industrious week with TAFE Outreach in Redfern! A quick round up revealed no less than 45 chairs in various stages of repair. While there are plenty waiting for some attention, I'm amazed to note that the group is tackling 3 arm chairs, 2 occasional chairs 6 cafe stools and 7 dining chairs all at once!

We're trying to work in stages - getting through the sanding on selected projects before applying finishes, so that we don't ruin great paint jobs with fine dust from sanding.

We can't help ourselves though - slowly the colour and the final fabrics are sneaking into the work pile and onto the furniture. And Oh! What a difference it makes!

The red stools got another light sand between coats of paint. A pair of scandinavian dining chairs that were stripped of one cover last week were stripped again in a game of Reuse Pass the Parcel. Miki, Claire and Lesley used steel wool to rub in a 50/50 solution of mineral turps and linseed oil - finessing the timber finish to a smooth dark caramel.

Our lunch break was suitably gourmet - We're becoming far too accustomed to baked treats and vegetarian delights. Cashew nut rice, apple crisps, home made hommous, dolmades, orange and avocado salad and guacamole! Why would you eat anywhere else?

After lunch we gave in to the fabric temptation.

Fabric donations have been rolling in, from upholstery designers and Bower Donors. Miki spied a deliciously happy yellow bedspread that provided just the antidote to the somber black vinyl that had once sat on these frames.

Bedspreads are a great option for reuse upholstery, usually thick and durable, they are often beautifully patterned and textured as well. Just remember to avoid fade marks and any wear and tear in the fabric when selecting a section to use!

The result is disarmingly charming -  I can't decide if it's 50's madmen or 70's kitsch in style, but it's like no other pair of danish chairs in town, and definitely brings a smile!

I'm ecstatic to see so much enthusiasm and productivity in the Redfern  Bower Reuse & Repair Centre and can't wait to see what everyone acheives next week.


- Maaike

Paint, oil and other fun things

Wednesday came around again and the enthusiastic team of Furniture Reuse and Restore students assembled at the Redfern workshop to continue our projects and learning. Once again it was a 2 team approach, but with lots of swapping over of personnel between the woodworking and upholstering teams so that most got some hands on experience with both.  
 

A lovely old Oak Armchair is coming along very nicely with the re-springing completed, and the timber arms sanded back ready for varnishing.

At the upholstery bench a team was eagerly continuing work on a set of Romanian chairs that are being converted to more modern looking stools. Extra attention was required to day due to the tricky re-assembly of 8 chairs into 6, and some parts requiring a little hand work to get things together.

At the timber work bench a set of children's size bench seat and table was being continued with a lot of drilling and screwing work required to get them all together. In previous weeks the timbers had been bevelled, sanded, and oiled in preparation for this assembly, and today was the day.

All the team took a hand in the work and gained first hand experience in the use of power drills to drill, countersink, and install woodscrews. Thing wet very smoothly and before long the benches started to take shape

Mention must be made of the spectacular ‘bring a plate’ lunch. Once again people broght along an amazing assortment for our buffet style lunch, and it was an culinary success. Special thanks must go to Maaike for preparing not just one, but several delicious dishes. There was no shortage of dessert either with cakes, strawberries etc galore.

Somehow we managed to push on after all this into the afternoon with our projects getting further keen attention, and many getting very close to completed. Some of the converted stools were even able to get the first coat of brilliant red paint

And the Oak armchair was oiled with linseed oil. You’d never believe it had once been discarded. 
 

We all look forward to continuing next week…..

-Glen

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