Piano Stool re-cover - advice needed.

[David Wade]

Folks,

I have an old piano stool that my grandfather made, I guess in the 1940s or 1950s. The seat was a board with layers of padding. perhaps wood shaving , then some sort of hair perhaps horse hair and then some sort of fleece or raw wool, then railway carriage moquette. (he was a railway man)

The top layer of moquette is faded and worn through and some of the lambs fleece has been lost. I have bought some replacement moquette, sadly not the same pattern, but I am sure its suitable.

As some of the original wool padding is missing, as is a small quantity of horse hair I was wondering if I should replace the lot or try and get more raw wool to fill the gaps.

Any advice gratefully received.

Dave

[Mr Pounder Esquire]

This will probably not help you. I once tried to recover a stool and made a right mess of it. Bite the bullet and take it to a professional to do. You have the material so it should not cost that much.

[David Wade]

It might! I have already tried to locate a professional to do it and despite several calls had none returned. Many seem to have retired or closed shop!. Google is no help!. Yell.com does not appear to have been updated for years.

So if any one has any suggestions in Manchester or even Cheshire, that would be wonderful...

Dave

[John Miller]

Unless you want to retain the original padding for some reason, then I would ditch it and replace it with some modern foam. Recovering stool cushions isn't that difficult in my limited experience. I've done 2 or 3 without any problems using a staple gun and stretching the material tight over the padding. It's worth a go. If you're not happy with the result you can just take it off and find an upholsterer. John M

[Owain Lastname]

Heritage Rail Fabrics have original pattern moquettes, most are special order but a few are available from stock.

London Transport also have moquettes available per metre; some are a bit modern and garish

Horse hair (it may be Chinese now) is readily available from upholstery suppliers. First find on google

Owain

[Harry Bloomfield, Esq.]

David Wade pretended :

Watch the Repair Shop or what ever it's called and the other program with Welsh Drew the antique dealer - they often have the specialists in them, doing quite similar repairs.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Just don't take Jay Tosserhead's advice on anything. I've only ever seen him do one repair and he ruined the item

[alan_m]

His skill seems to be to paint one chair leg a different colour and charge a couple of hundred quid for it.

[David Wade]

Actually watching the repair shop makes me feel that its unsafe to trust anything interesting to such people. They remind me of the Spanish lady who "improved" a invaluable church painting.

Besides that, thankfully I am in South Manchester and they are in Singleton, West Sussex. Too far away!

Oddly I used to know the Vicar of Singleton....

any way I have ordered foam to replace the horse hair and wool. I will experiment with my staple gun I bought for tacking a lining to a raised bed on concrete. I feel I will do less damage than the Repair Shop.

Sadly I can't ding the original Moquette so its going to be covered with this one:-

(he sold be a suitable piece)

Dave