Nursery Chair

This week I started work on two mini Parker Knoll armchairs. As I wanted to keep one in our nursery and sell the other, I decided to do mine first so that if I made any mistakes on the first one then I would know how to do the second one better. I am so glad I decided to do this as I have already had to redo a couple of bits! 

It took me nearly two days to strip, due to stubborn staples and an ever growing bump getting in the way of bending and general flexibility! I haven't done enough of the new upholstery (that I'm happy with) to post photos yet but here is how the chair looked while being stripped.

The back

The front

The Parker Knoll!

The back stripped, showing the springs that keep the chair in place when you lean back.

Stripped and ready to be put back together again.

Starting as I mean to go on

I have had a productive start to 2012 and am determined to keep it up. I already know that I like organisation and routine, and with a baby arriving in April, I feel that 2012 needs to be the year that I make every effort to keep organised and be as productive as possible. That includes this blog, so I will be trying my hardest to update it every week... or maybe every two!

So far this year Mr Briggs and I have painted Baby Briggs' room and got started on some decorations (these will be posted soon), had a couple of days romantic break in London, ordered a beautiful cot, looked at pushchairs and ordered a new kitchen. For me one of the most exciting things has been that my tub chair has been sold in the shop in Stonehaven, and someone even went in and asked if there were any more! I can't explain how exciting it is that someone liked a piece of my furniture enough to buy it, and it has really inspired me to get on with more upholstery this year...

So the past two days I have been working on a headboard for our bedroom. This is how our bed used to look, a bit dull.

So I bought some mdf from the nice people at Walker Woodstock - I use the Gorgie road depot where they are all very friendly and will cut your wood to whatever size you need. The full size sheet wouldn't fit in our car so I had it cut in half and when I got home drilled some mdf struts to the back to put it back together, and then glued some foam to it. The foam was ordered from eFoam, who I would definitely recommend as the site is simple to use and they always deliver really quickly.

Next I attached my material - "Linen Stripe" from Laura Ashley. I like working with stripes as they give you something to work to when attaching material to a straight edge.

We don't have much space either side of our bed so instead of having lamps either side we bought some clip on lights from Ikea. I attached two strips of mdf to the back of the headboard so that these could be clamped to the back and allow the light to shine out round the sides of the bed.

Two headboard forks were then attached to the back to allow the headboard to be fitted to the bed. 

And now this is how it looks.....

The artwork in the last photo is a 19th century Japanese block print that I bought from Liberty in London (with some very generous Liberty gift coins a kind friend gave us for a wedding present). I bought it specifically to go in our newly decorated bedroom and was worried the colours wouldn't be quite right - I would say they are pretty much perfect!

New(ish) Coffee Table

The first piece of furniture that Mr Briggs and I bought together was a Victorian scrub top kitchen table. The legs weren't really equal and there was a huge bow in the top of it but we loved it. And it was while eating lunch at this table that Mr Briggs proposed to me. So when we decided to redo our kitchen and realised that our table wouldn't go with the modern new look we had a dilemma. With a baby on the way we also needed a bigger table as our original one only sat 4 and we anticipate many guests and a growing brood over the next few years! So we found a beautiful (new) oak table for our kitchen with no funny angles or wobbles.

And then, we made our lovely old table into a coffee table!! We did feel a bit bad sawing the legs off an antique piece of furniture but we knew we would never again need a small kitchen table and couldn't bare to part with such a sentimental piece.

The above photos show me using a marking gauge to score a line in the legs where we wanted to saw them off. This meant we had an even line all around to follow, so that we would not (supposedly) saw in wonky lines!

Line left by the marking gauge

Next, I started off the sawing.

When sawing you should saw down your line vertically on the side you can see then start sawing horizontally. This is because if you have sawn evenly down the line, when you start sawing horizontally your saw SHOULD be locked into position from the vertical line and therefore saw straight all the way down. Hope that makes sense to anyone attempting this!

Mr Briggs finished the sawing off for me when my arms got tired!

I then sandpaper the bottoms of the legs while Mr Briggs carried on sawing and the dog kept a close eye on our work.

And then we ended up with a perfect coffee table, just high enough for Henny to rest her weary head on after all that work.

Cushions for sale!

I made a few Harris Tweed cushions last week with ribbon trim, and now they are in a REAL SHOP! How exciting! You can see these comfy cushions in John A W Briggs of Stonehaven (yes we are related!). He is actually a Persian rug specialist but has kindly offered to see how some of my creations sell - the tweed tub chair is up there too. We will be going up there with some more cushions, and possibly some dining chairs, in a couple of weeks so I will post some photos of the shop then. For now here are the latest cushions.

Piano Stool

I have just finished upholstering the top of a piano stool, while this clever lady fixes the bottom half. I forgot to take any before photos but here is what it looks like now.

The underneath is missing a panel so I attached plenty of webbing and a hessian cover to take the weight of people sitting on it. A block of firm foam was then glued on top and a calico layer attached to pull this into shape.

The top layer is a lovely pinstriped green Harris Tweed. It was more difficult than I expected to get the stripes to line up straight...

Or to get them mostly straight!

Last of all a light green braiding was attached around the edges to cover the staples.

 Once the top has been reintroduced to it's legs I will show you the finished product!

Comments!

So I had some lovely comments on here about the last chair, and I tried to comment myself to say"thank you", but my own blog wouldn't let me comment! I have no idea what I am doing wrong but every time I write a comment, pick an id (it doesn't matter what id I choose) and hit enter, the page refreshes and my comment isn't there. So this post is to say thank you for those lovely comments Sam and Zoe, and to let you all know how much I really appreciate kind words about my work, whether they are on here, on facebook, or in person. When you've been working hard on something and putting all your creativity and personality into that work, it is so heartwarming to have someone tell you that they like it. Suddenly all the hard work and frustration becomes worthwhile.

Thank you!

My Kitchen Chair

I have always wanted a kitchen big enough to hold a dining table and sofa so that everyone can gather in one room comfortably - like my mums kitchen! Our kitchen won't hold a sofa but it does have space for a chair. Over the summer I bought this lovely old thing...

Mr Briggs though refers to it as a smelly old thing and told me this week that if I didn't recover it quickly it would have to go!

So I stripped it back, until it looked like this...

And in the process got my fingers spiked by many needles and found this odd collection...

I knew that I had lots of gorgeous Harris Tweed from our honeymoon, but I didn't have enough to cover the whole chair. So I picked a green and brown tweed that matched the old coffee bean sacks I had bought for these chairs. The sacks were a bit of a nightmare to work with and there was the potential for it to look awful but Henny and I gave it our best shot.

My beautiful assistant "helping" me cut out the tweed.

And we were VERY pleased with our efforts. This is possibly my favourite piece of work that I have done. My iphone photos don't really do it justice, and I know this makes me sound rather big headed, but this chair is awesome! And it smells like coffee!

Now maybe I will finally finish this to match it.