Recycling old chairs? Here's some practical advice from Cork experts

Carol O’Callaghan sets out to prove how in the right hands items like discarded chairs can be transformed

I’ve always had a love of mid-century modern furniture, with a particular hankering for some 1960s G-Plan Fresco dining chairs.

For me, it’s a combination of their solidity, clean lines, quality materials, and the workmanship of English manufacturer E Gomme of High Wycombe, who made them in response to the surge of interest in Scandinavian design at the time.

Giving the collection the cooler name of G-Plan, they became a popular choice among young couples setting up home from the mid-1960s to the late ’70s.

So perhaps it was kismet that I recently rescued a set of Frescos from the clutches of the charity shop.

The next step was to consider a makeover for modern times while maintaining the design integrity of my little beauties.

Realising if the job was to be done right it would take more than my efforts at a polishing job on a Saturday morning, plus the dire need for reupholstery meant it was time to call in the professionals.

Master craftsmen, upholsterer Eddie McGarry and furniture restorer Paddy Dunne have come to the rescue.

Although they operate from the same premises in the Daol Business Park on Cork’s Tramore Road, they are separate businesses enjoying a symbiotic relationship.

It’s clear business is brisk in their studios by the obstacle course of furniture I wend my way around on arrival, stopping to admire a beautifully polished antique bureau Paddy has ready for collection, and a set of chairs newly upholstered by Eddie, commissioned by a noted interior designer.

With 43 years’ experience, it was the fastidious training Eddie received from a stalwart of the upholstery trade in Cork, the now-retired Owen Kirk, that means his work is meticulous.

“If I made the tiniest mistake, Owen would make me start all over again,” Eddie says, as I watch him work on the inside of an antique cabinet he’s lined with a silky damask fabric.

A trained glance at my chairs and he instantly tells me: “They either came from Cavendish’s which was on the corner of Oliver Plunkett St and Prince’s St, or the Munster Arcade.”

Within minutes he has stripped one of them of its tired fabric to examine the bone structure beneath.

“The mistake people can make is upholstering on top of the old fabric,” he says. “The chair then loses its definition.”

He decides to keep the original foam on the back rests. “You don’t get this quality anymore,” he tells me.

It’s obvious that he and Paddy have been practising sustainability long

before it became fashionable.

Meanwhile, I’m daunted by the dozens of books of fabric samples, each containing at least 30. There’s a particular dusky pink I have in mind. Eddie knows instantly where to find it.

“Good choice,” he tells me. “I remember that colour from the ’70s, so it goes with G-Plan.”

Next, it’s Paddy’s turn to examine the now skeletal chair. He floors me by saying, “It’s teak. You’d be looking at between €700 and €800 today to make a chair like this by hand. It’s a week’s work.” And he’d know, with four decades of experience, and training for six years under the exacting eye of the late, great Tommy Nodwell.

Lifting my forlorn little chair onto his workbench, he performs some magic in front of my eyes. “Watch this”, he says, and slowly applies a slick of liquid to one of the legs.

I’m mesmerised as it turns from a dull, dark brown to warm amber, rich with emerging teak grain hidden away for years. I wonder if it was a build-up of Mr Sheen sprayed on lovingly by a Cork housewife of years ago which kept it concealed?

No two days are the same for Paddy. He could be resurfacing a modern kitchen table today, polishing a boardroom table tomorrow, or repairing a chair. Sometimes they’re items brought to him by generations of the same family.

Auction-house and junk-shop aficionados are also among his customers. “You can pick up affordable furniture from these places,” he says. “Then you spend money on the restoration. But you have to be fair to people and advise if something is not worth doing, like woodworm having gone too far.”

Seeing what’s possible for my quartet of Frescos, April and the finished job can’t come fast enough.

Part two next month: The revamped chairs are unveiled and Paddy and Eddie share their dos and don’ts for approaching furniture restoration and upholstery projects.