Furniture Refinishing – Herman Miller Transformation!!
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Often I get calls from potential customers stating, “I don’t have an antique piece of furniture, can you help me refinish or transform it?” The answer is always a resounding yes!! People tend to think of their grandmother’s glossy dining room furniture as things that get refinished.
At Wehrli Furniture, we are looking to change that perception. Furniture can be art and it can be a lot of fun. Recently, we received a call from a repeat customer. She found a number of Herman Miller pieces that she wanted painted. Her desire was to match the original style and add some of her personal flare. Herman Miller, Inc., is based out of Michigan, and is famous for creating some of the most iconic furniture in history. If you’ve ever sat in a cubicle, you’ve sat in a Herman Miller design. It was originally debuted in 1968 as the “Action Office.” I can’t speak for our readers but the original name couldn’t be farther from the cubicle experience!
The customer’s pieces consisted of three dressers and desk. All the wooden drawers fit into metal frames. Because all the drawers were visible, they would serve as the focal point of all the pieces. Previous Herman Miller designs featured multi-colored drawers, so the customer wanted to repeat that theme.
We started by stripping the white paint off the drawers and sanding them very well. Next, we moved to prepping the 11 drawers for painting. Only painters can appreciate the amount of prep work that goes into painting pieces correctly. It’s far from taking a piece of furniture and spraying it, and calling it a day. In this case, the customer wanted each drawer to be multi-colored. That required more prep work than just about any paint job we’ve done. Each drawer had to be taped in such a way that the lines were clean and even. She elected that all the sides would be green and the drawer fronts would rotate between orange and citron. The result made our customer ecstatic because she’s a Mid-Century Modern purist.
If you’ve got a piece of furniture that’s dull or boring, don’t throw it away! Pieces don’t need to be made by a famous designer to be reincarnated into something cool and hip. Please give us a call for your next project of click on the work order request form below. We look forward to earning your business.
