About Arren Williams
If Arren Williams were to walk through one of those new scanners at the airport, security personnel might be surprised to see chairs, tables and lamps floating around in his head. As one of Canada’s top stylists, editors and trend reporters, he is always on the hunt for the next great find that could take a room from blah to spectacular.
Arren's Chair Makeover
design diary: chair refinishing canada
(Apr.13.11)
You’ll often see ugly "befores" and then gorgeous "afters" when it come to makeovers of everything from furniture to complete interiors, but the funnest (I know, it’s not a real word!) for me is seeing the inbetweens, since that’s where the possibilities lie. Take these rather bizarre and over-the-top green velvet chairs. A client of mine spotted them, snapped them up and we set to work planning out what we’ll be doing to give them a brand new look and a brand new life.
No, the frames definitely won’t be staying cream with gold detailing, and yes, that green velvet is not staying either. In fact, if you have a look at the other two shots you’ll see the upholsterer has stripped the chairs down and that they’re in the midst of being refinished. The white shows what the look like with a coat of primer (really rather fantastic) and then the semi-gloss grey shows you the final finish we decided to go with (really rather fashionable). Oh, and if you look closely you’ll see that I got Tim at Beresford’s – the refinisher – to pry off that wiggly bit of detailing on the back and below the seat to clean it all up and make it look way fresher and a lot less ‘granny’.
A nice start, no?
And now plans are afoot to get the upholstery going. A fabric has been picked (something lovely from Thom Felicia, actually), so all that work will be happening soon, and with that comes a ton more decisions. Do we want to keep it as button-tufted as it was before? Errr, probably not. How about the seat cushion, could we do away with it? Yep, maybe, but I think we’ll keep the cushion and do something a bit squishy and relaxed with a down fill.
Decisions, decisions, and when the chair is finished I’ll let you guys judge the final results!
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