Recovering existing furniture adds life to tired old pieces, saves Earth’s resources, is not that expensive and you customize all possible details.

I’ve had this chair for several years, which patiently sat in my garage, gathering dust until I finally found time to deal with it. I rescue furniture off the streets much like some people rescue animals. Even if it looks tattered and dirty – I know instantly if it can be saved. Same principle applies to scouring secondhand stores: look at the form, the bones of the object. If it is solid and not missing parts, most everything can be fixed. It can be stripped, painted, stained or reupholstered.

The best thing: it is definitely unique. I know nothing about this chair except that it was most certainly not massed-produced – another great perk for keeping your eyes open to unusual finds. Also, now this won’t end up, sadly, in a landfill. Recycling at its best.

Because this chair has traditional features, I knew I wanted to make it more modern with my stain and fabric choices to compliment my interior. I also wanted the unusual rounded woodwork to stand out so I chose to go with high contrast between the two.

Being the resourceful person I am, I thought I would just quickly strip the woodwork on the piece and stain it myself to save a little money. Holy Moly, what a pain. I absolutely could not get a consistent stain finish! So I had to strip and sand it a second time, reapply the stain, only to end up with the same uneven result. All that hard work and it looked awful. Some of the grain was a light honey color, some was almost black. This process, of course, wasted three valuable weekends plus several more weeks of deliberation and irritation. I realized that some things are better left to the professionals so I found a local shop with a lovely man in the business for many years who had photos and examples of his refinished furniture on display. He had me pick out a stain and magically, one week later, it was done.

My upholster didn’t know the chair’s origin either but guessed that it was from the 1920s. If anyone out there knows the period, please comment below.