10 Days of hot hard work to restore this Art Deco Sofa

So first step to any restoration is just make sure your shoelaces are tied up. You're looking at a 1930s Art Deco sofa. True Art Deco. Beautiful rolled arms. It has a wood accent. It's also insanely ******* heavy. The foam is, I think it's been modernized. This was upholstered about 30 years ago. I'm going to attack it. I'm going to strip it apart today. You can watch that. Whip off all the wood. Try and get as much of the fabric off as possible and get ready for the next stage of upholstering this bad girl. To take the base off, to pull the screws out, all I'm going to use is a set of side cutters, some basic pliers, some wire pullers. The reason why I use these is they're great to leverage off flat surfaces without needing a hammer. So they're basically my claw hammer. This is for picking in and getting out nails and getting staples. And this is my little baby one. This is really good for my hand size. I like to use this for removing staples. And that's my little staple lever, like a screwdriver, but it's got a special little hook on the end. Start somewhere, I guess. The amount of nails on this one arm alone is 13. There's two nails up under here. So I'm not sure how I'm going to do this one without damaging it. There we go. Let's release that. Next step, pull out these nails. No doubt when I pull the fabric off, I'll probably find some more. The base is going to have to come off. I didn't really want to do that so early, but I'm going to let that roll like a big old barrel. Oh, it's very slippery. There we go. Spiders. Vacuum. Let's go. What do we got here? Wheels on the bus go round and round. Nails. I'm going to have to find a way to get these nails out. Oh my god, that's massive. That is ginormous. That's 12 inches. Okay, we're not jamming up there. Look at the size of these bloody nails. That is ridiculous, people. Don't do that again. Well, this can sit here for a minute because I need to pull the base off and loosen up all the fabric on the base so I can then pull it up off the sides. I've got 400 staples to remove, so I'll show you when it's done. Some fabric and patterns overlap. They need to get attached to the frame first, and then you put the other piece over top and attach that and vice versa. So I've got to find out what the very last piece was that was attached to work our way forward. I'm going to number them because I like numbers. So then this one here is four, and then what went on underneath it, this went over this, so that's five, and the arms here are six. So we work that in reverse. So that is the sequence that I'm going to take everything apart, and the sequence that I'm going to put it back together. Too many staples is a thing, and in this case, wow, I've also got to pull this old... I can't remember what the name of it is. It's a wadding. It's all mulched. It's old fabric, remnants, leftovers, bits of foam, everything just mulched together and then fluffed up. One cleanish pattern piece. Number one. This wadding, this stuff here is horrible stuff. Oh my goodness, look at it. A couple of holder Every now and then you get a little bit of money. In this case, we're rolling in it. Two, three, 20, a razor blade. Now that's actually not what I'm after. It's that one. Oh, it's there. You have to cut it. What a freaking mess. So next step, panel number four, panel number five. Oh, sorry about that, banana. If you're doing an old suite like this, you're gonna bleed. I've wrapped my knuckles twice now. This old wood is rock hard and sharp. If you haven't bled doing a project this size, this age, you haven't lived, man. All right, here we go. Here we go. And there we go. No, it was a total overkill, you prick. Oh, guess what? Dope. Haven't actually undone any of this. I get it. I get it. I get it. Gonna use a knife for this. Someone's blind stitched it because there's no traditional framework to attach any staples to right here. More of the ----. It's all under here too. Oh, let me get up a little old man step. Oh my goodness. I'll tell you all why I limp one day. That was a battle. That was a hell of a battle. Now, that was as good to get to this stage. All the fabric off, all the wadding off, I can see what I'm looking at. I've got my potential patent pieces sitting in a pile on top of the cutting table. Got a big pile of detritus, ripped fabric, wadding sitting on the floor, and a bit of rubbish. Also got a pile of cash. Talk about making a bonus. Okay. So, once I've given all this a cleanup, I've organized my patent pieces, I'll pop that to the side for a few minutes, and I'll start on the woodwork. So, strip the wood back. I'll also need to replace a couple of pieces of missing chipped wood. I'm just looking at the frame sitting over there. Anyway, let's get down off here, go have a rest, and then go have a cleanup. All right. Okay. So, the plan is to remove these nails, scrape off as much of this hoof glue as I possibly can, this will crack anyway. Separate, find all the splits, where we have these splits, and they're on. Wherever a nail went, there's a bloody split. So, I'm going to have to pry that split apart and force some more glue in there. Once they're glued up and strong, I will start sanding and stripping them. So, once I've done these, I'll do the base, and then have a look at upholstery. We have, where is it? It's right there. It's quite light, which is nice. Oh, it's obviously a reason why that dark stained it. So, I can't go back to that same color. I've got to go dark again too. This thing's a goddamn mess. Then you've got a massive split here. So, that obviously needs to be repaired. There we've got a split here as well. I just noticed that. I have to fix that. So, tools of the trade, we're going to be scrapers of various shapes and sizes, but I'm not going to use these anymore because I'm not digging it back to bare wood. So, I'm just literally going to soft sand. Want the hose? Did you say you want to prop me? Air hose. Take him on. I've got quite a bit of a split. It's disappeared. It's also profiled. So, what I might end up doing is putting a piece of plywood on top, cutting a little hole out just so I've got a flat surface, dropping a skilly blade in here to about this point, just cutting across, and then I'll glue in a piece of wooden shape and profile it. Sounds good. Let's do it. About there maybe. There we go. There we go. Yep. There we go. So, what I'll do is I'll screw that down. Now, I can only cut to probably about here before I've got to lift the saw out, and then I'll have to use the multi-tool the rest of the way. So, we're looking at depth of 20. Right. I'm happy with that. That's a reasonably flat surface. I'll match that red with that red. So, but what I've got to do is break a piece off. Well, let's go. All right. I'm going to chop down there, chop down there, two clamps, glue face, which is going to be that face there. All right. So, I'm going to overglue this. Obviously, I want this to be as strong as possible. Now, what have we got to bloody grab onto? This one, I don't know. We've got that out to this, which is maybe the edge. Oh, crap. Lots of hydration is key too. Let's have a look at the state of these things. So, it's 70. I need 10 meters of piping. That's some pre-made piping from something I prepared a little earlier. We need 10 meters. This is one meter, two meter, nine meters. Pretty damn close. Let's get these puppies apart, see what's going on under here. See what we can... You can already see something I don't like. Wow. Quality of work. The foam isn't even straight. My goodness. This is terrible. So, the vacuum cleaner isn't doing a really good job. So, I switched over to the brush. The next step here is to use the trusty foam cutter and try and get some 90s out of this. Let's start with one. Now, the foam tends to be grabbing on that foam cutter and the knife. I'm not sure why, but I won't muck about because you can also use a bandsaw. It is very, very tacky. Look, we're done. We're done. I'm going to feed my dog. It's the end of the day. There's a technique to this. Today is going to be sticking hot. I can tell. So, these are the patent pieces I have cut and so on. We have got left arm. Right arm. Front panel. Under squab panel. Back rest panel. Back panel. And one squab. Two squab. Done. I've got some pre-mixed dark stain here. I'm going to swap out the sealer. What we're going to do is quickly flush out the cap. Won't matter if over the top of that, I add the color. Now, this is a mix of clear coat, color, and thinners. So, there we go. Oh, yeah. So, the normal way or the original way of attaching this to the frame over top of the upholstery was to use tacks and nail through. This thing has about 15 or 20 holes in it. Splits up the middle where there's been too many nails. It's too old and too dry. So, we're not doing that again. What I've got to do is use these long hex head bolts and a little, I don't know what you'd call that, a little bit that you screw into. This is going to attach to the back of that and be drilled through here so I can suck it in from behind. That begins, people. Time to strap upholstery to this bad boy. Turn the radio off first. There's a bit of notching, a bit of cutting, especially down here. I see you every day. On my block in your white tee. You look a pretty friend to me. So, what are you waiting? When I'm swimming in my dancing shoes. Asphalt's hot and my knees are bruised. It's a summer, got a lot to prove. Can't wait to do it, can you? No! I wanna swim from side to side. In the neon lights. Sitting in a wonder world, got vibes. My goodness, is it hot today? It is the day before Christmas. It's the 23rd of December 2023. So, most of it's done. It's just little details. Got to roll and put some shape on all of these areas here. Got to add and foam up the front. Put that front piece on. Got to foam up, add a panel across the top. When I'm swimming in my dancing shoes. Asphalt's hot and my knees are bruised. It's a summer, got a lot to prove. Can't wait to do it, can you? No! I wanna swim from side to side. In the neon lights. Sitting in a wonder world, got vibes. For dinner. I've been seeing you every day. On my block in your white tee. You're looking pretty fine to me. So, what are you waiting? I've been seeing you every day. On my block in your white tee. You're looking pretty fine to me. So, what are you waiting? When I'm swimming in my dancing shoes. Asphalt's hot and my knees are bruised. It's a summer, got a lot to prove. Can't wait to do it, can you? No! What have we got here? 14? We've got 13. So, half of 13 is 75. No, it's 65. That looks bloody good. Beautiful. Okay. It is an insanely dark, wet day today. We are three days out from another year, another cycle, full cycle around the sun. We're not far from finishing this off. There's not a lot left to do, just a few things to clean up. I've got to finish off the arms, tighten them, pull them around, put the back on, and then put the base on. Let's go. Pop hail. Liftovers. Bloody lovely. So, there we have it. This project is done. The last step is to get it on the back of the trailer and deliver it to the client, which, she only lives 100 meters down the road. Bonus, not rubbing it on anything or scratching it on anything. Yes, this does weigh a lot. Once we find the casters. Well, we're here. I need a reverse. All right there, people.