Urbane Reclamation Furniture Restoration

This past week I was fortunate to be able to visit Urbane Reclamation, an upcycled furniture business in Pittsburgh's East End. The owner and founder, Emily Bush gave me a tour of her shop showed me her showcase of finished projects. All of her pieces have been gently used and need just a little TLC to get them looking spiffy again. While visiting, she even let me have a hand at refinishing a chair! Here's how the process works:

Emily picks out pieces of furniture based off of their current condition, aesthetic value, and time period. She has a lot of Victorian-style pieces. This is a typical style found in the area. The East End has many Victorian homes, and estate sales are very frequent.

She had several chairs waiting to be refinished so we chose a straight-back chair with a cushioned seat. We started by popping off the upholstery tacks from the seat. Under the cushion cover we discovered another layer of fabric, and another, and another! This chair had four layers of different fabric on it. It's previous owner must have remodeled a lot, or been very indecisive. Needless to say, we had to remove four sets of tacks, staples, nails and screws! It took us about an hour and a half to remove all the metal bits.

Once the chair was stripped of all the hardware, fabric, springs, and support, we sanded with coarse sand paper. Emily explained that the coarse sanding would help the primer adhere to the wood. If this were going to be stained, we would go over it again with a finer grain sand paper to smooth out the texture. Since we were going to paint, we just needed to do a rough scrubbing. After we abraded the surface, we wiped it down with a damp cloth. This was followed with a layer of primer.

Over the next day or two Emily will fill in the nail holes, smooth out the rough edges and apply the final layer of primer. A layer or two of paint will follow, and be finished off with a matching cushion. Check back in soon for the finished piece!