Never be afraid to ask...for WAY more than you can afford

An Inspector Calls at Remy Bumppo, turned out beautifully, with a huge beautiful oriental rug and beautifully finished wood furniture. 

When we started work on the show, and the set designer sent me research with images of the type of furniture he was imagining, I was worried. I knew my budget was not enough to be able to purchase anything. 

 Then, when I discovered that none of my go-to rental sources had anything, I was even more worried. 

 I hoped that I would find someone on craigslist selling something beat-up that I could repair, or something they didn't know the value of. But after weeks of looking I had nothing.

 While out running other errands in the city, I drove past an antique store that I hadn't been in for years. I had long ago ruled it out as being more expensive that I could afford on any of my budgets. I figured it couldn't hurt to stop in, and I was desperate. 

 Walking into the store I immediately knew I had to find a way to work with them. The furniture in the store was right out of the research images. 

 I approached the owner and told him the situation. I had $X to spend and knew that was far less than he should charge me for a rental of all the pieces I wanted. I could offer him comp tickets to see the show and an insert ad in the program (with a guesstimated value of $X, which would be seen by approximately X number of people). I would take responsibility for the safety of the items while they were in the theater's possession, and the show itself is fairly tame, no large fights, no one treating the furniture roughly etc.

 I was also able to provide him with a copy of the company's insurance policy, to assure him that, should some unforeseen incident harm his pieces, we would be able to compensate him. 

 He agreed to the rental and we have a beautiful dining room set with a table, six chairs, two beautiful gold mirrors, an overhead light fixture, and buffet and a marble top server for exactly what I had in the budget. 

 As precautions to preserve the condition of the furniture, we made sure to tell the cast and the set construction crew that it was rented and valuable, so that they take extra care with it. I have also given the ASM some nice furniture polish and rags. Every evening after the performance she wipes off and polishes the top of the dining table, to make sure no drops of liquid from the show are left on it, and to keep it in beautiful condition. 

Forte Piano

One of my biggest worries going into our production of Amadeus, was the forte piano. You simply can't do the show without it, it's the focal point of several scenes and needed to be beautiful. 

Our costume designer proposed a brilliant solution. As it turned out, one of the local universities was planning to do Amadeus this coming school year. She put me in touch with the set designer there and we decided to share the work. The University paid for the materials (about $200), and gave me their shop space to work in for the day. They also sent me a student assistant for a few hours to help. I did the research, shopping and building, and the set designer at the university did the painting. 

 The piano was built with a plywood base and lid. 1x12 framing, and bendy-board for the curved side. There is a 1 inch plywood curve, cut to match the curve of the base of the piano on the top edge of the bendy board which helps it hold it's shape. 

To create the keyboard I used a single piece of 1x12 and ran it through the radial arm saw at 3/4 inch increments. Each cut only went about half way across the width of the board, leaving everything attached on one edge. This allowed me to only worry about attaching one piece, and allowed me to keep even spacing along the keyboard. 

The black keys were cut from a piece of 1x which had been ripped on the table saw to the correct width I needed. The ends were curved down by briefly running them past the belt sander. 

 The legs of the piano were Oak railing pieces purchased at Menards and cut to length. They are attached with long lag screws going from the inside of the piano (attach these before the keyboard) down almost 5 inches into the leg. 

 I used an extra leg, hinged to the inside of the piano to hold the lid open when needed. 

 I ended up having to cut the lid twice. The first lid I made from immediately tracing the base, when I initially drew it, and cutting both at the same time. Unfortunately, since my carpentry was not perfect, and the sanding and smoothing of the curve after cutting each piece was not exact, the first lid didn't fit at all. I traced the top of the (almost) finished piano to create the second lid and the curves matched much better.

 And here is the finished piano onstage, finished and painted. 

 I was very proud of how it turned out. 

Golden Chairs

Let me start by saying that for Amadeus, at Oak Park Festival Theatre, we had just about zero budget. I had to be incredibly selective in how I spent my money because the script calls for many props very specifically. 

I was especially worried about furniture, after seeing nothing that could immediately pass for Rococo chairs in the limited stock, some plastic garden chairs caught my eye. 

 

There is no garden scene in the show, but I wondered if there would be a way to add an upholstered seat in order to make them feel like indoor dining chairs.

I found three chairs in total, two that looked like the green one above, and one that looked like this white one. After a coat of gold paint, they looked just flowery and over-the-top enough to pass as authentically Rococo. 

 By using a fender washer to hold a screw through one of the holes in the plastic seat, into a plywood circle I cut, I was able to attach upholstered seat cushions without damaging the chairs. 

 I think they turned out well, and they worked perfectly for the moment when Salieri talks about how he was able to buy lavish new furniture for his apartments. 

Altered Mission Desk

For The City and The City at Lifeline Theater we had been using this old mission style desk from stock for a rehearsal furniture piece. I was having a bit of trouble finding a final show piece in our budget that was long enough to fit four people seated and thin enough to fit though an incredibly narrow doorway. 

Eventually the designer and I had a discussion and decided that maybe we already had the perfect piece, it just needed some adjustment to make it look a bit less recognizable as a mission style desk. 

I started by removing the stretcher from the front side, and replacing it with one center. 

I also cut out two of the five slats on each end to get rid of the distinctive mission style look. 

I cut the legs on one end and added castors so that the table could be moved easily, like a wheelbarrow by one person. 

Add some silver paint and a coat of hammered steel spray paint for texture and we ended up with a table that is believable in a morgue and looks appropriate in a conference room as well. 

Desk and Pianoforte

For Pride and Prejudice at Lifeline Theatre, the scenes move very quickly. We had absolutely no time to be moving furniture on and off stage. Because of this fact, we needed one pieces to serve two different purposes, we needed this piece to be a desk in multiple scenes, and a piano forte in two others. I needed to cut out a section of the lid of the desk.

 Once open the hinged piece could serve as the music stand and a rough keyboard would be revealed underneath.
On a side note, one of the most tragic parts of my job is that I regularly purchase beautiful, antique, solid wood furniture, and then I destroy it. That first cut makes my wince every time.

The trickiest part of the process was finding a way to hinge the panel invisibly. I knew even if I used the smallest piano hinges I could find, and chiseled out the joint to inset the hinges, they would still be visible. Luckily I stumbled across an old set of invisible hinges at the hardware store.
The edges of each hinge are made to be inset into the side of the board to leave the gap totally seamless when the hinge is shut. Here you can see images of the hinge in it's open and closed positions.

And here is the sides of the joint, chiseled out and ready to screw in the hinges.

And here is the hinge set into place.

After making sure the hinges worked correctly, I installed a pieces of 1/4" plywood underneath the flipping panel for the keyboard.

I painted the plywood white, added stripes for the white keys, and strips of gaff tape for the black ones. I have to admit, close up, the keyboard looks like it belongs more in "You're a Good Man Charlie Brown" than "Pride and Prejudice" but from a distance it looks great, and is almost always facing completely upstage so the audience can only catch brief glances of it.

All I needed from there was a small pieces of string to hold the panel at the correct angle when it was open, so that actresses could easily place their music.

Check it out. Final product open

and almost completely invisible when closed.

upholstering a cane-back chair

For Pride and Prejudice at Lifeline Theatre, the designer, director and I pulled three upholstered chairs from stock that we liked. They were covered in a dark burgundy fabric with upholstery tacks all along the edges. I knew I needed to recover them to make them fit much more with the pastel, delicate world of the show. I was having a fairly easy time of it on the seat,

 and on the front side of the back. 

When I got around to the back side of the back I encountered a problem. These had at one point been cane-back chairs.

Whoever had upholstered them previously had just stapled in fabric as best as they could, but the fabric was loose and wrinkled and the staples were visible in places. That would never work for this show.
I decided what I needed to do was to create a new, semi-rigid panel that would fit into the back of the chair to cover the cane.
I started by using printer paper, folding, creasing and taping it in place to create a pattern of the space that I needed to cover.

 I traced this pattern onto a piece of illustration board and cut it out,

 then I used spray adhesive to attach my fabric to the front side of my cut-out.

I slit the extra fabric all along the edge of the board so that I could smoothly fold the fabric over onto the back (where it was again attached with spray adhesive).

Finally I slowly worked the board into the back of the chair. In many places I was able to wedge the illustration board between the wood frame and the old cane so that, in the end, the back panel stays securely wedged in places without any glue or staples of any kind.

 Which also means that someone can easily remove the panel and repeat the process the next time the chairs are recovered.