I know a chair better than its owner: why refurbishing is more intimate than you think

By the time I’ve spent a week or two refinishing a piece of furniture, I’ve likely spent more time truly seeing it than anyone has in decades - maybe ever, since it was made. 

When clients bring me a chest of drawers, a chair, or a sideboard that’s been in their hallway or bedroom for years - sometimes twenty-five or more - it’s often with a kind of vague affection. It’s always been there. It does its job. It blends into the background. But once I get my hands on it, all of that changes. 

I’ll spend hours with that piece. Taking it apart. Sanding, stripping, reinforcing. Sitting with it in silence while I work around a tricky joint or try to understand an old repair someone else did, sometime in the distant past. I run my hands along every edge. I see where it’s been knocked, and scratched, where something sticky was once spilt (and never entirely cleaned up). I know which drawer always sticks a little, which screw is original and which one isn’t. 

Sometimes, pieces will hold tightly onto their stories, making me investigate. Sometimes they want me to know their story and they’ll tell me everything immediately. I once restored a vintage Japanese tansu, full of character - and history, I discovered. I purchased the tansu from a neighbour who couldn’t recall when she acquired it. While taking it apart, I found a photograph and a postcard wedged behind one of the drawers. The postcard was dated 1960. My neighbour, who’d owned the tansu for many years, had no idea it was there. It had been quietly travelling with that chest through homes, through the decades, unseen and undisturbed. 

Postcard found in vintage tansu

Things like that remind me that furniture isn’t just functional – it's played a part in someone’s life – sometimes many people’s lives. We brush past it every day, drop our bags on it, stack post on it, eat dinner around it. But very rarely do we see it. 

That’s the strange privilege of what I do - I get to see, closely, properly. I get to know your furniture in a way most people don’t - and then I deliver it back to you better than it arrived, with its stories honoured and its quirks cared for. 

So yes, by the end of refurbishing, I may well know your furniture better than you do - but I think that’s kind of lovely. I think it’s my reward for taking the time to refinish a piece, carefully and respectfully.  And now you get to see it again - maybe even for the first time. 

Have you got a piece with a past? I’d love to meet it.