Tag Archives: furniture

Upholstering a Chaise

I just finished Buyer and Cellar at Triad Stage. We needed an all-white antique French chaise. I could not find any within our budget, especially since I knew I would need to reupholster anything I found.

One of the great prop secrets is that you can order furniture frames from companies that sell to professional upholsters. I found a company that made a chaise in the style I needed. You can order a frame unfinished and knocked down, which means it arrives without any paint or stain, and it is completely unassembled. The cost is a fraction of a finished piece (and the shipping is far cheaper, too).

Unboxing the chaise
Unboxing the chaise

The frame came flatpacked just like a piece of IKEA furniture, only instead of allen keys, it fit together with glue and dowels.

Assembling the frame
Assembling the frame

Other than a few extra (I hope) pieces, assembling the whole piece was easy to do with the provided instructions.

Adding the seat
Adding the seat

At this point, a real upholster would start adding webbing for the seat. I like to put a flat sheet good across the whole base. It makes it much more rigid, which a lot of actors prefer because they can get out of the chair much more quickly. It also provides support for when the director wants someone to stand on the chair, which will inevitably happen (and did indeed happen on this show).

Foam cushions
Foam cushions

I painted the exposed wood before adding any fabric to avoid a mess. I upholstered the back and inner panels first, because the outer panels would block off where I needed to staple.

Seat cushion and side panels
Seat cushion and side panels

The chaise has a groove routed along the edge, so I stapled the fabric into that and then trimmed the excess. My thought was that I could stick some 3/16″ decorative cording on top to hide the staples and give it a nice, clean edge.

Final seat cushion shape
Final seat cushion shape

I covered the side panels in cardstock and put the cushion directly on that. I also tried to cover the back in cardstock, but that didn’t give enough support, so we needed to go back in and reinforce it with some webbing.

The seat is a luxurious piece of four-inch foam made possible by a 70%-off coupon from Jo-Ann Fabric.

Stapling down the fabric
Stapling down the fabric

In the picture above, you can see the fabric before it was trimmed. I found an Olfa knife worked really well. We also found some gold cord in the Christmas aisle at the craft store that worked well to finish the edges.

Finished chaise
Finished chaise

The remainder of the upholstering was done by Keri Dumka and Shay Hopkins-Paine, who worked with me on this show. Overall, it was an interesting experience to upholster a piece of furniture totally from scratch. It also gave me some ideas on how to build upholstered furniture in the future.

Sofa from The Price

We recently closed Arthur Miller’s The Price at Triad Stage (preceding the Broadway version by a few weeks). With a week before tech, a concern arose that the “Biedermeier-style” sofa blocked too many sightlines. We needed a backless version, and since nothing like that exists in our stock, I had to build one.

Tracing the profile
Tracing the profile

The designer, Fred Kinney, found a research image he liked. The photograph was taken straight on from the front, so I was able to trace it directly onto some plywood with an overhead projector.

Cut outs
Cut outs

I made each front and back piece out of three pieces of plywood and doweled them together. I have some temporary blocks attached in the photograph above to help clamp them. They will also be held together in the back by the cushion frame.

Building the base
Building the base

The base for the cushion was just a simple platform frame.

Cushion
Cushion

The cushion for the couch was a separate piece made of high density foam on top of a sheet of oriented strand board (OSB). The whole thing can be removed from the couch at any time. The plywood from the home improvement stores is so prone to warping; I’ve switched to OSB for my upholstered pieces because it is one of the flattest sheet goods you can buy there. It is really cheap too, though it does add a bit of weight and you have to build a good frame underneath it.

Armrest
Armrest

The armrests needed to be long pieces of solid wood shaped into a rolling curve. I traced the curve onto several smaller pieces of lumber, and cut away most of the waste with several passes through the table saw. After gluing the pieces together, I smoothed all the angles into curves using a belt sander.

Unpainted piece
Unpainted piece

I routed the edges of the front and back to give them a decorative profile. The armrests were screwed in, but I also ran a large through-dowel to help support them since actors were going to be resting there. I also doubled up the plywood on the legs and arms to make them appear thicker and to give more structure.

Backless couch from The Price
Backless couch from The Price

The inside panels of the arms were covered in fabric, while the outside panels were capped with a piece of wiggle wood. The whole thing was painted and covered in amber shellac. I found two rosettes in stock and added them to the center for that final decorative touch.

Friday Friday Prop Prop Prop

“Don’t Touch That!” The Trials & Tribulations Of A Props Designer – Here’s a fun little piece from TheatreNerds.com to share with your friends and family who might not totally understand what you do for a living.

How to Paint Foam Props to Look Rusty – Punished Props has a great video showing how to make flexible foam sheets (EVA, XLPE, craft foam, etc.) look all rusty.

Shortcuts to Good Design – Christopher Schwartz shows how he uses scrap wood and wire to quickly mock up a furniture design. He can check the proportions and scale from all angles before building anything too complicated.

Build Props and Costume Armor with Paper, Pepakura, and Bondo - Shawn Thorsson demonstrates how you can turn a digital model into a file to print out, cut, fold, and assemble into a three-dimensional prop. You can then stiffen it with polyester resin and Bondo.

Farm Table for Abundance

Last spring, Triad Stage did a production of Abundance, one of the lesser-performed plays by Beth Henley. It was directed by Preston Lane, with scenic design by Robin Vest. One of the main furniture pieces was a giant farmhouse table. I decided to build it because finding a farmhouse table this size would blow the budget, and they are usually pretty hefty.

It needed to be super sturdy but fairly lightweight, because they jumped up and down off of it, flipped it onto its side, and dragged it around on stage. To cut down on the weight, only the boards around the perimeter of the top were the full thickness; the ones on the inside were thinner, with a bit of hidden framing to sturdy them up.

Underside of the table
Underside of the table

The breadboard ends allowed me to hide the different thicknesses of wood used for the top. I positioned the legs so they would straddle the joint where the breadboard was attached so it would not snap off if the actors ever stepped on the very edge.

I also made the legs hollow. They were made from four pieces of wood with mitered edges glued together. To save time, I glued up four long pieces of wood, and when dry, cut it into the four legs.

Joinery
Joinery

The research images for the table led me to a website called “Ana White”, which also had plans for the table the designer liked. I’ve since come across several woodworking forums which resent White’s style of furniture, since it seems to be flooding the market with this kind of shabby chic table that won’t hold up to seasonal changes. Ah well, the look was right, and it was easy to slap together.

Clamp it up
Clamp it up

I experimented with some new (for me) finishing techniques to get a really aged, rustic appearance. The first step was scorching the entire surface with a propane torch and rubbing the charred wood away with steel wool. It took forever; I wonder if an oxy-acetylene torch would have been faster, or if it would have just started an unstoppable fire.

Burning the wood
Burning the wood

After that, I rubbed an oxidizing solution over the whole thing. You can find instructions on various websites; basically, you let a piece of steel wool dissolve in vinegar for a few days. Apply it to the wood with a paintbrush and it starts to darken and grey the wood over the next few hours. Once it was all done, I rubbed a coat of paste finishing wax onto the whole thing.

Final table
Final table

It ended up being a great table for the show. I could actually carry it around myself, though for the show, it was always two actors moving it. It only started loosening up during the last show, after weeks of being tossed up on its side, which placed a lot of stress on its legs.

Abundance
Abundance

 

Links for a Long Weekend

Do you need a feather quill pen for a show? Lexey Jost has an Instructable showing how to make one that actually writes. Now you can keep your production of 1776 under budget.

Buzzfeed(?) has a collection of diagrams to help you decorate your home. They have everything from antique chair back styles, to common furniture sizes, to the names of lampshade fittings. Most of us prop masters have a collection of diagrams like this to help in decorating a set, so here’s a chance to grab a few more.

Many of us already saw this last week, but in case you missed it, that insane Mad Max flame-throwing guitar was no CGI trick. Find out how and why they constructed such a crazy practical effect.

Volpin Props has another great build log up. This time he made the Cael Hammer from the video game, Bastion. It’s a mix of EVA foam, vacuum formed plastic and PVC. He’s got a lot of great little tips and tricks for shaping and painting these various materials.

“Do not let artisans discourage you from learning this or that trade because they have not made a success of it. They may tell you that a certain trade is overcrowded. Investigate a little and you will find that only the botch workman and chronic kickers are out of work. The cheerful, enthusiastic workman is idle only when misfortune overtakes the whole country.” Read more from this 1888 article on workmen over at the Lost Art Press Blog.