Curb Collective Week 11

Now that we know we will participate both in the Newtown festival and in the Finders Keepers Market, it was high time for our group to find a name. After a lot of propositions, one finally stood up amongst the others as it reflects different aspects of who we are and that we do during the course : we are a group attached to the reuse of objects nobody wants anymore, transforming the trash into treasure... We are CURB COLLECTIVE!!

With this new name in mind and only two weeks before our first display at the Newtown Festival, we were faster than ever this week! We are trying to finish as many projects as possible, working in groups to be quicker: time is running out, we will sell our furniture in only 5 weeks!

Richard, Dominique and I worked on the beautiful French metal chairs. After dozens of tries with all the lovely fabric we have, we finally took the decision to have the seats brightly striped, and the backs covered with flowers and birds. It was a good time to remember what Maaike had taught us a few weeks ago about reupholstering with a striped fabric. Indeed, the stripes have to be perfectly parallel to the side of the seat and to be perfectly straight, which means you have to apply the same pressure on each side, or they can quickly become bumpy and wavy. And to finalise the chairs, we added an orange dust cover. Next and final step next week: to assemble everything!

Mark finished his black velvet chair: after the cushion he had made a couple of weeks ago, he added a lovely bow to its back this week with the shiny diamante studs we ordered from China. Now this chair is fully finished! If you love it, come to admire it next weekend a the Newtown festival!

Mikki and Stuart took care on a large chair: they put a mountain of flock on it before adding the dakron so that it would be very comfortable. We can't wait to know what fabric they will choose to give it its final look!

Jeannette and Michael went on with the armchair they started two weeks ago: they put linseed oil and re-webbed it. It is now completely unrecognisable when you compare it to the poor armchair The Bower received as a donation months ago!

Do you remember the set of 4 red stools we finished a month ago? Min put linseed oil on it, with the project to have a set of two stools completely different to the four first ones: these two will be more classical and more sober, fitting in any house!

We are sure that new amazing furniture will be created in the short period of time before the festival and the market! And it's absolutely wonderful to be a part of it!

- Claire M

Business Time!

Last week we stood back and took a furniture count - We've started no less than TWENTY FIVE pieces in 9 weeks. Now we're at the business end of the semester, we've split into smaller working parties, working in twos and threes to determine the final look of each chair.

Miki finished her pair danes with a bedspread akin to woven sunshine from Pollyanna's own collection. I like to think of these as a pair of kitsch-en chairs. They remind me of kitten heels and martinis and Summer - all good things!*

*Good things outside of a workshop environment. Inside, we like steel caps and fruit cup cordial with our Summer.

Mark has been working patiently on his own black velvet glamour piece. We're waiting for diamante studs to arrive from China to finish off his elegant concept - fingers crossed they come for next week!

Min and Leslie found themselves responsible for a plantation chair that has done the rounds, so to speak. The girls began the piece late last Semester, then Fiona and Anthony have pitched, Stuart and Mick helped spring it, Claire and Glen padded it, and someone else again did the linseed oil!

Min took some time to sew up a lovely neutral patchwork for the final upholstery during the week.

Peter put a few coats on his ply stool and sanded down the chrome legs - You'd never know it used to be a timber laminate chair!

Cathy was hard at work helping all of us redowel, drill, clamp and sand as necessary, and even took the time to show us a little bit of home maintenance - the art of masonry drilling and plugging is a very useful one to know!

All of us are super excited as we were accepted in to The Finders Keepers Market.
Not only is it one of the most selective markets in Sydney, it draws a HUGE crowd, allowing us to promote our Reuse & Repair ethos to plenty of customers, just in time to inform their christmas shopping.

More info on that coming soon!

- Maaike

A little bit fancy

Yesterday we took some fancy photos of the group's work so far as part of the Redfern TAFE/Bower Project

The work so far has been so great we wanted to get something nice for the group, so we went to visit our friends at Bev's Remnant House who gave us great prices on some beautiful remnants we can piece together - fitting in nicely with our belief in lifecycle extension wherever possible! You can see some of those pieces below. Will they end up on the plantation chair? We'll have to wait and see what each working group decides!

We're gearing up towards a final exhibition/end of year extravaganza in late November/early December - Stay tuned!

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

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.

__________________________________

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

Week 1 in 107

This week was our first week working in OUR NEW WORKSHOP SPACE! Ok, so it's TAFE Outreach's space, loaned from the good folk at City of Sydney Council, but we get to play in it!
Furniture Reuse classes began on Wednesday with a burst of enthusiasm we could only have imagined!!

Check out below for Teddy's take on his first class in Reuse Repair Recycle Furniture

 ________________________________

What a joy it was to ride my bike to 107 Redfern St this morning!  A gorgeous almost-Spring morning, perfect for getting my hands dirty!

The motley gang of eco warriors, furniture restorers and handy types gather around, anxious to start, feet tapping, hands twitching...we want to make stuff!  

We've found ourselves huddled in a huge warehouse space in Redfern, Banksy stencils littered carelessly across the walls, hints of glitter and charisma are all that remain from the presence of Mardi Gras and our teachers are ready to roll!  Today is upholstery!  Chairs and chairs and more chairs are pulled out, foam, flock, dacron and calico swing in bags around the warehouse, staple guns, tack removers and hammers are held at the ready as Maaike explains and demonstrates how we are going to make mess into magic.  

My accomplice Fiona and I tackle a gorgeous timber arm chair. All that is left of it's former glory is a well sanded frame and a few rusted springs, a gem of a project! 

We begin by weaving the base and back with hessian strips.  It's tricky but once we got used to the stretching tool and handling the tacks we were on fire.

Next we stuffed coconut fibre and the soft downy flock on the back and covered it with half a hessian sack.  The back really started to take shape at this point. 

 It felt great to see a tangible outcome so quickly!  Why is it that we are so scared of making things?  Of fixing things?  All it takes is a little information, the right kind of basic tools and a bit of motivation and virtually anything can be phoenix-ed out of the ashes!   /end rant

The dacron came into play next, we shaped a piece and stapled it in place.  The group gathered around us as we worked, gasps of awe escaping alongside the fire of the staple gun.  

 Every single person around that workbench was smiling and we left excited about what we would create next week!  Can't wait!

-Teddy

  

Reuse Textiles!

Some of us spent last Wednesday working with the furniture repair students in the TAFE Outeach course.

Last week they made their seats comfy, and this week was the fun part - reusing a city of Sydney Street Banner to cover no less than 5 dining chairs - with plenty to spare!

The group learned how to stretch and place fabric coverings on dining chairs in preparation for 2 larger projects they've already started pulling apart. The fun part is seeing the diverse styles of chair coming from one piece of fabric - An awesome result of reuse in action!

Next term we'll be looking at repairing and re-finishing the dining chairs that match these seat pads.

 But for now, just for fun, we're pulling apart 2 armchairs to see how they work. These 2, like the suite of dining chairs, will be a team project, and we're looking forward to seeing what they come up with!