Chippy Telephone Seat

I've been into Mid Century furniture and antiques for quite a few years and am always on the lookout for retro bargains to add to my collection!

I had seen a few examples of Chippy Heath furniture online, so I was really excited to find a telephone seat in a local charity shop. "It's a Chippy!" I shouted, with my nose pressed up against the shop window. My boyfriend was not impressed as we had just dropped off three or four bags of old clothes and books to make space, which would now be replaced with a piece of furniture - not helping our decluttering efforts one bit, but I had to have it!

Chippy Heath Furniture Ltd was based in High Wycombe and produced many Mid Century designs during the 1960s and 70s. Check out this 1970s magazine advert featuring a Telephone seat very similar to my own!

Here's what my Chippy looked like when I first bought him. In need of a bit of TLC, yes?

I set to searching for information online to help me spruce him up. This great YouTube tutorial gave me some brilliant tips on restoring and repairing Mid Century furniture.

I took over my Mum's garden for the afternoon and, after a bit of wrestling, managed to remove the seat pad ready for re-covering. After that I gave the whole frame a very light sanding before wiping clean and the polishing with teak oil, which brought out the lovely grain in the wood. My favourite feature of the seat is the little pull out drawer for writing down notes and phone numbers!

I even managed to almost completely remove a big watermark on the top surface using the ironing tip shown in the above video.

I couldn't decide whether to re-cover the seat with my Nasturtium print fabric or Mimosa, but went for the Mimosa in the end...and here's the final result! What do you think?

Let me know about your Mid Century bargains and what you end up doing with them; I'd love to hear about your finds!