Something special is happening above the Shelter furniture shop in Erdington. In the space previously occupied by the town’s pool hall and the menswear section of a department store before that, there is a hive of activity once more. Brian Jones, the Upcycling Workshop Manager and initial architect of the project, shows me around.
A few years ago, Brian, then working as a van driver collecting donations, was called out to a recently widowed woman’s house. She was clearing out the furniture as she was going to be moving into a home, and he found himself unable to say no to collecting a worse-for-wear table and chairs, after hearing the story of how it had been a surprise anniversary present from her late husband. Bringing it back to the shop, despite the manager’s dismay, he offered to spend two Saturday mornings painting the chairs and re-oiling the tabletop. The set was sold for £180 and the idea for the upcycling project was born.
I can tell Brian has put his heart and soul into the project. He proudly shows me a photo of the empty space above the shop as it once was and describes how he transformed it to now include a staff kitchen, several pens to house items waiting to be revived and the half a dozen or so workstations in the main workshop. Despite this there is still work going on. There are ambitions to list more furniture for sale online, and Brian is currently making a photo studio for eBay listings that also doubles as a study for paperwork and features window frames made of old bed slats.
Now, he has the help of four dedicated volunteers who come in every week, plus an apprentice soon to join. He describes newbies as quickly becoming “part of the club”, attesting to the friendly team atmosphere and camaraderie. The workshop also hosts corporate volunteer days and works with the probation service to host Community Payback volunteers.
It's not just the furniture that is transformed here - the positive effect on the volunteers is evident. They will always take on their own projects, shaping the plan of the design from start to finish and are encouraged to think outside the box to get their creative juices flowing. Brian tells me that a lot of the volunteers have complex needs and will often arrive at the workshop unconfident, shy and reserved. However, he recounts how overhearing two volunteers who had been keeping to themselves for weeks, mid-way through an unprompted discussion on their respective projects, made him feel proud of their achievements.
Walking around the workshop, I see pieces of furniture at various stages of their upcycling journey. Current projects include a drinks cabinet that will be fitted with LED lights to highlight the gin glasses within, a chest of drawers given a lick of paint and an assortment of new colourful handles, and a newspaper rack which will be decorated with a collage of magazine cuttings and glossed.
The cupboard at the side of the workshop entrance is brimming with bits and bobs to help lovingly restore or reinvent the donations. New tools are picked up from around town as and when they’re spotted. With a tin of chalk paint here and a roller there, it’s clear that the next design is never far from mind. Brian enthusiastically tells me about a new laser brush that he’ll be purchasing soon to use with some stencils. The team look through magazines for inspiration and there’s no shortage of experimentation. Even the tins of paint in the workshop can’t limit them. When Brian had a colour he wanted in mind, he mixed a navy and pink until he found the exact shade, making for a truly unique cabinet – mid-blue with a pink sheen in the light.
He tells me how he loves to let his creativity run wild. One cabinet he upcycled using what some might call a garish wallpaper, featuring peacock print, sold within twenty minutes, raising £180, much to his colleagues’ shock. It was driven off to its new home behind some imposing electric gates in a nearby affluent area. On the other hand, another experiment, a lamp painted pillar box red, took months to sell and had to be heavily discounted. Brian says he’s learning what suits local tastes, with grey selling well and ‘shabby chic’ being particularly in vogue. However, there’s always still room for a bit of off the wall thinking!
There are bits of history dotted all around the workshop. A glass fronted cabinet has been made into a mini museum, where old treasures including vintage coins and a camera have found their way. The team will often find remnants of past lives hidden in the donations that come up the stairs, with their stories only tantalisingly half told. I’m shown a bench that was being stripped down by a volunteer when they made a surprising discovery. It’s an old sign, used in a previous repairing attempt, possibly during the second world war when materials were hard to come by. How a sign advertising the services of a band based in Thornton Heath, just outside Croydon, ended up in a suburb of Birmingham is a mystery we’ll probably never solve.
Brian shows me something else intriguing found at the back of an old sideboard – two dog-eared black and white photos, possibly taken around 100 years ago considering the outfits of the people featured. We identify one man who appears in both and wonder who he was and if he may have been the previous owner. The sideboard will now be upcycled and rehomed for another household to use and enjoy, but Brian wants to preserve the original features. That the upcycling workshop can breathe new life into these well-worn and preloved items, and the legacy of the previous owners can live on is a satisfying thought.
In fact, this very space which now buzzes with activity as volunteers set to work on their latest projects, has a lot in common with the upcycled furniture within its walls. Indents on the floor where pool tables once stood serve as a reminder of its previous life, and I’m told that the team are looking into obtaining an old sign to display in the workshop. It’s clear that although change is inevitable, the best upcycling projects will repurpose, reuse and rejuvenate while retaining an essence of what was loved in the past.
Shelter has 80 shops across England and Scotland, including 7 furniture shops. Find your nearest shop here.
You can visit the Erdington shop at 193 - 197 High Street, Birmingham B23 6SY and follow their upcycling projects on Instagram.