Re-upholstery vs Recover - An Explanation of These Terms

Psychologists claim that only 7% of communication is verbal and the other 93% is non-verbal; this is usually broken down as 38% vocal (volume, pitch, rhythm, etc) and 55% body movements (mostly facial expressions and body language).

7% Verbal Communications and 93% Non-Verbal Communication

Clearly our non-verbal skills are critically important and are something which we should constantly strive to improve.  However, for now I’m thinking about the verbal communication when discussing proposed work on a piece of furniture.

The terms ‘re-upholstery’ and ‘recover’ are often used interchangeably as though they mean the same thing.  It has been my experience that herein lies the mis-communication.  

When a client tells me that they would like their favourite granny’s armchair re-upholstered I like to question them a little more and listen very carefully to what they say.  Usually a client is only interested in the main fabric and the finished look of a chair.  They usually have little interest and knowledge of the many layers underlying the main fabric.  Little do they know that the finished shape and look of the chair is a result of building up several layers of materials.

To Re-Upholster a chair:

• All the materials have to be removed and the chair completely stripped back to the frame.   

• Once this is done the chair frame is assessed. All weaknesses or breaks and any looseness or movement of the joints are corrected so that the chair frame is sound.

•   Now the frame is ready to be re-upholstered.

•   For traditional upholstery this usually involves 7 layers of materials being carefully built up.

• Modern upholstery uses fewer layers of materials.

• It is during these stages that the shape, size and comfort of the chair is achieved.  If fundamental mistakes are made during the early stages these may seldom be successfully corrected as the re-upholstery process proceeds:  actually some errors may become exponentially magnified as the work progresses.

A chair in the process of being re-upholstered

Of course, for some furniture it isn’t necessary to completely strip off all the old materials.  If the chair is sound, the webbing and springs in good condition it may only be necessary to remove some of the layers which will be rebuilt.

The extent of the re-upholstery should be discussed fully.

To Recover a chair:

• The old main fabric and maybe a couple of the underlying layers must be removed and replaced with new materials and the new main fabric.

•   When I am recovering furniture I spend time discussing and examining the shape and comfort of the chair.  During this time I can assess whether the chair will benefit from adding new stuffing etc.  

As you can see when you instruct an upholsterer to Re-Upholster or Recover a chair you are asking them to do different jobs which will be reflected in the price charged.  Having an  understanding of what the difference is will help you communicate effectively with the upholsterer.

Installing Curtains on an Off Centre Window

I’ve recently made a pair of interlined curtains for a front entrance hall where the window is not centred in the wall.

The left hand side of the window has 21 cm of available wall space, but

on the right hand side there is only 9 cm of wall.

As the curtains were to be hung on a pole this raised a fabrication and installation difficulty because we were not using a pelmet or valance to hide the difference in the wall spaces.

So we had two options.

Option 1:

We could fabricate completely symmetrical curtains and install the pole centred on the window so that the brackets were an equal distance from the centre on both sides.  This would mean that an identical amount of window glazing would be covered by the curtain and the installation would be quick and easy.

Option 2:

We could fabricate asymmetrical curtains and install the pole brackets so that an equal amount of wall space was visible between the finial and the side walls.

Not being one to do almost anything the easy way, I chose Option 2!

To install the pole we first installed the bracket on the right hand side (the side with the smallest available wall space).  We then calculated the amount of visible space and using this measurement worked out exactly where the left hand side bracket needed to be placed.

Without the curtains hanging this arrangement looks a little odd, but I was using the curtains to create the “illusion” that the window was truly centred in the wall.

However, because I was taking more of the curtain to the left hand side wall this meant that the left curtain would cover less glazing than the right curtain which could result in the window looking unbalanced and the illusion failing.

To overcome this I “played” with the spacing between the triple pleats for the right hand curtain.  I increased the size of the spaces on the outer edge side of the curtain and reduced those on the inner side so that the curtain appears fuller and heavier on the outside to balance the look of the left hand curtain.  Additionally, by reducing the inner spaces less of the window glazing is covered which matches the look of the left curtain.

These are photos of the finished heading and full length of the curtains.

You’d never know that the window was not in the centre of the wall.