Steve Hasenbeck, the owner of Peacock Upholstery & Furniture (6700 Morgan Ford, 314-481-4870), has been running the 80-plus-year-old family business since the 1970s, when he took over the firm from his father, who started the company and used Old World techniques from his family’s native Germany.
“There was only one right way; everything else was wrong,” says Hasenbeck, recalling his dad’s philosophy of quality and service.
Get a weekly dose of home and style inspiration
Subscribe to the St. Louis Design+Home newsletter to explore the latest stories from the local interior design, fashion, and retail scene.
Many clients—among them the owner of this Queen Anne chair, which is being restored as a gift for her daughter—have been loyal to Hasenbeck for decades. Let’s see how he and his staff effect this transformation.
Step 1: What’s the goal?
Understanding what the client needs is the most important step in the restoration process, says Hasenbeck. When a piece comes into the shop, he strips it to the bare bones and assesses it. “I think it takes an artist,” he says, to consider the lines, to determine what was done to it to make a piece look so “ungodly awful.” Here, he measures the frame and seat height and depth, considers the appropriate proportions for the human body, and consults with the client on the details: How does her daughter like her chairs to sit? How does she plan to use the chair? What will she be viewing from the chair?
Step 2: Start from scratch.
Hasenbeck decides that the springs need to be recoiled, the cushions replaced, and the missing parts remade. He gets to work regluing blocks of wood for framing; he recuts the wood pieces to achieve the desired shape; he clamps the wood into place and shores up anything that is loose in the frame. He also touches up the existing legs in a dark mahogany finish before moving on to the cushions.
Step 3: Comfort is king.
“The biggest element to comfort is the seat,” Hasenbeck says. In this case, the chair’s cushion has come loose. He adjusts each of the springs, hand-tying Italian twine in eight places and resetting the springs. This is the most time-consuming part of the restoration, taking three to four hours for a single chair.
Step 4: Fabric selection
Choosing a fabric can be a challenge because there are so many options. “Most people pick out a half a dozen patterns and have a hard time narrowing them down,” says Hasenbeck, who stocks more than 10,000 fabrics at his shop. He uses muslin to position the padding and protect fabric, for which the client selected a modern geometric pattern in blue and white. Hasenbeck does the sewing in-house to ensure a high level of detail and quality.
Step 5: Client review
Once the restoration is complete, it’s time to present the results to the client. “This is still a little nerve-wracking,” Hasenbeck admits, “although we’ve never had a client turn away a product. Most people love the work, and we love providing quality service.”
