1960's chairs....before and after

About 6 - 8 months ago I picked up two fabulous 1960's chairs in our local second-hand / antiques shop. I loved the shape and size of them, but they were old, a bit fusty and whilst I loved the original green woven fabric, they were in much need of new foam cushions and re-upholstering.

 

The first thing we did was to set about stripping back the old dark varnish.  Mr B tackled this job over winter, at night and in the garage - I don't think it was much fun, whilst I trawled through fabric books and ordered a heap of fabric swatches to chose from.        

Removing the dark varnish transformed the chairs, revealing a lovely pale Scandinavian looking wood (which apparently is Myrtle) and we then simply finished this by rubbing over a wax to protect and seal the wood.  I decided to cover the chairs in different fabrics, rather than having them as a matching pair, and I settled on 'Baxter' in Wasabi from Warwick, and 'Bubble' in Yellow Chrome from Zepel Fabrics.    We used a Stephen Read, a great local upholsterer in Woodend to re-cover the chairs, as I fear my average sewing skills and very old sewing machine might not have been up to the job!