Richard Brochert sometimes gets called Nanaimo’s Chip Foose of furniture.

Unlike the automotive design and restoration guru, Brochert overhauls classic furniture instead of cars.

Brochert, a master upholsterer and furniture designer who has worked his craft for more than 50 years, owns Brochert & Company. He restores classic furniture, chairs and sofas dating back to the 19th century and builds furniture based on new designs as well.

On a laptop computer in back of his Jingle Pot Road workshop, he and business associate Blair Girtel, who owns BGID Interior Designs, scan through photos from an impressive portfolio of projects, describing each piece, its construction and techniques used to restore or create it.

Brochert and Girtel are proponents of paying the higher cost for good quality furniture that can be rebuilt and updated even if it goes out of style.

“At one time, everybody had furniture you could recover because it was built better,” said Brochert. “You can get an old 1930s set, if you’re into that, and restore it. You can restore a chair for $800 plus fabric, but you get a new chair – but you’ve got to take it right to the frame.”

Stripping a piece of furniture down to its frame eliminates dirt, moulds and smells trapped in old foam and stuffing. The completed piece is essentially a new product.

Girtel says it makes environmental sense to refurbish good furniture rather than buy inexpensive products that wear out and end up in a landfill.

Successful updating means maintaining the design’s original character.

“I’ve worked with Richard where we’ve taken good quality furniture – and, you know, it’s dated – and just recovered it, maybe change the arm design a little bit,” said Girtel. “Furniture used to be a lot lower. Now it’s bigger and taller, so we raise it up a little bit.”

All woodworking, refinishing and upholstering is done on site.

Brochert started learning the trade from his father when old-style furniture construction techniques were still being employed. If he had started just three years later, he says, he would not have been able to learn his craft, because the methods he was taught were just beginning to be phased out.

“You can’t learn this trade anymore,” said Brochert. “Nobody teaches this, so that’s one of the problems. There’s no shops to teach it.”

Brochert’s wife Sandra does all the sewing.

“I taught her how to sew, now she tells me how to do it,” said Brochert.

Girtel handles most of the selling and much of the custom design. Consequently, much of Brochert’s work comes from Girtel’s clients – mostly in Nanaimo, Nanoose, Parksville and Qualicum, but occasionally orders come from elsewhere. One chair was ordered for a movie set.

He takes on projects of passion, like the 1920s gramophone he recently completed and a wire-back chair awaiting his attention in a corner of his shop.

Wire-back furniture has not been made since the mid-1800s and restoring it is labour intensive. The frame is created from heavy wire, not wood, the stuffing is horse hair and everything must be stitched by hand.

“It doesn’t pay to do a chair like that, unless you really love it, because with a chair like that you’re going to be looking at four or five thousand dollars labour,” he said.

When Girtel comes up with a design idea she runs it by Brochert who assesses the feasibility of the design, how it will wear, how comfortable it will be, how the fabric will stretch across the frame.

“It’s nice to know that when we have a project together that the quality is going to be bar none,” said Girtel. “It’s not mass-produced. It’s individual. It’s a rare thing to find.”

photos@nanaimobulletin.com