Interior chaos from the Petersburg studio "TreshVintazh"

What to do with a dilapidated but expensive carold furniture to your heart? Restoring it, of course! The owners of the family workshop "TrashVintage" told us about how they turn grandma's closets and grandpa's desks into unique pieces of art. Inna and Yana Kovalchuk are involved in two projects at once: the family mini-hotel ProPiter, the interiors of which are made in a unique author's style, and the workshop "TrashVintage", within the walls of which the mother and daughter restore old furniture. And they don't just restore, they turn old chests of drawers and crumbling closets into works of art: bright, shocking and 100% unique. We talked to them about their favorite items, finding inspiration and careful attitude to "grandma's" furniture. Inna and Yana Kovalchuk, studio "TrashVintage" Studio "TrashVintage" was founded in January 2016. This is the second project of mother and daughter, Inna and Yana Kovalchuk from St. Petersburg. The main focus of the studio is furniture restoration for private and public interiors. vk.com/interior_treshvintage, @treshvintage_interior — Tell us a little about yourself and your studio. — We are the Kovalchuk family, mother Inna and daughter Yana, we live in St. Petersburg. Our family studio of interior mayhem "TreshVintage" is a total makeover of furniture and interior items! From sad and unhappy tables and sofas, we create works of art, any of which can become a dominant feature in the interior, an object of delight and envy. — How did it all start? How did you come up with the idea to remake furniture not only for yourself, but also for others? — Our main brainchild is the ProPiter mini-hotel, which we opened in 2014. We remade a lot of grandma's furniture for him, and we liked it so much that we came up with a separate project, within the framework of which we could restore furniture for everyone who wanted it. We were attracted by the fact that we can give furniture a second life, come up with a different use for it. For example, a bicycle in our hands turns into a chandelier, grandma's closet and grandpa's table - into a sofa, we make a reception desk from a collection of books, and make a dining table from a sewing machine. — Do you remember the first objects thatmade to order? — All of our first works are in ProPiter. We really didn't want to say goodbye to our grandmother's solid cabinets, tables, and sideboards. Probably, our first masterpieces were born simply from the need to preserve the memory of our ancestors. Among the pioneers of "TrashVintage" we can highlight the sofa for guests in the ProPiter hall, which was assembled from my grandmother's doorless wardrobe (the doors, by the way, became headboards for the beds - we have a waste-free production) and my grandfather's desk. We sawed off the legs of my grandfather's desk, inserted the tabletop into the cabinet and covered it with soft fabric. The niches of the table now have space for a library, and a gramophone stands on top of the cabinet.— Do you have any favorite subjects?made by you? — Each item is born in the throes of creativity, they are all like family. But, perhaps, each of us has our own favorite. For my mother, it is, of course, the dining room set in our ProPiter apartment, which she collected piece by piece all over St. Petersburg. She took the antique sideboard from a St. Petersburg granny. We sawed it in half, and got a kitchen corner with a work area, a copper basin instead of a sink and upper drawers where the dishes are stored. Later, on Avito, we found a separate Singer frame and a marble slab, connected them and got a dining table. For it, we specially restored pre-revolutionary chairs of incredible beauty, which we found at the ruins of Udelnaya. My favorite is a chest of drawers with leather drawers in the patchwork style. When we took it, it was impossible to look at it without tears: there were no handles, only someone screwed a metal handle from a Soviet window on the side. The decorative elements were falling off, the color had faded. This chest of drawers was like an old grandfather — he had said goodbye to everyone a long time ago, but we were able to give him a new life. We had to devote a lot of time to the restoration and carefully think through how best to preserve all the details, but the idea for the decor came by itself. We made the chest of drawers green, to match the cloth on the gaming table, and in honor of our beloved Picasso, we made the drawers decor in the Cubist style. — And what things caused the greatest difficulty during the work? — As for difficult work, now we have a ZIL refrigerator, which we want to remake into a bar or a sofa. We are still having heated arguments about it. I think we will have a hard time with it!— Where do you get furniture for restoration andremake? — You can buy already remade furniture from what we have in stock from us. We buy it in its original form on Avito or on Udelnaya. Many people in our city, sorting out summer houses and grandmas' apartments, find amazing things, but don't know what to do with them, but we know. We can't hide the fact that some furniture beauties are already lying in the trash, and if they can be pulled out of there, then we do it. It's impossible to pass by - it breaks your heart. We can also "otTrashVintage" furniture that our clients have in stock: in this case, they simply bring it to us, we discuss the details of the order, and later give them the already remade interior items. — Tell us a little about the work process.— When furniture arrives to us, we don’t always know what we’re going to do with it, and it patiently waits for its moment of glory. And it also happens that we already have an idea, but we spend a long time looking for the pieces of furniture to assemble the set. We only remake furniture from high-quality materials; its appearance doesn’t matter to us. For now, we’re limited only by the size of the furniture we’re remaking, since our workshop is quite modest right now. When we expand, we’ll be able to take anything we want for restoration. We often use artificial aging and decoupage techniques to remake antique furniture. Mom, as a true Gaudi fan, loves mosaics; you can often find them here. I prefer natural wood, cuts and snags — I never leave the forest empty-handed. That’s why my favorite techniques involve applying a pattern to wooden surfaces and aging wood. — Do you have any made-to-measure furniture in your apartments?furniture by you? — Of course, there is a lot of TrashVintage in our apartments. Especially in my mother’s apartment, because our workshop is now located there, in one of the rooms. In the apartment where I live, everything is also decorated by us. For example, the book “The Wizard of Oz” is pasted on the chest of drawers, and on the wardrobe there is a large painted owl with the inscription: “The wardrobe is full, nothing to wear.” — Where do you draw inspiration for creating new items? — We believe that inspiration is in everything that surrounds us. Especially in St. Petersburg! It is full of creativity, inspiration is in the air undiluted. Sometimes we just choose a day for a walk, look at the buildings, climb onto the roofs. Walks along the bay, scooter rides, good wine and warm company contribute to the awakening of creative energy. And in general, we are two red-haired beasts who can get together and come up with something incredible just for fun, it works out for us! For a more global search for inspiration, we travel. The concept of a mini-hotel was born in Greece, and last year we picked up ideas for creativity in Barcelona. This year, we are going on a trip to Karelia for new impressions. - Do you take into account the history of the furniture that you got, or do you create something completely new from the existing base? - The furniture that we take in our hands is often antique and keeps a lot of stories. We try to ask the owners of the furniture everything: who used it, where they bought it, are there any funny stories, maybe even photos. We also always try to determine at which factory and when this furniture was made. All this helps us better understand the character of chairs, cabinets, tables and other items, and therefore, choose the right restoration and decoration. If an item has a great history, it is simply impossible to ignore it, and the entire design will be inspired by these stories! — What interiors do they put your furniture in?customers? — "TrashVintage" is at the very beginning of its journey: only recently have we started receiving serious orders. Our customers are families who have started renovating their apartments and do not want to part with the furniture they have "overgrown". We change the style of the furniture, come up with a different use for it. There are those who contact us during the arrangement of a new home or the opening of some establishment. They want the interior to have that very art object that will become the dominant feature in the interior, and everything will instantly sparkle and play around. — What are your plans for the future? Are you going to expand in the future or do you want to remain a family workshop? — Of course, we want "TrashVintage" to acquire a more stable and balanced nature of work. We dream of a large workshop and large interesting projects. But at the same time, we know for sure that we would not like to grow to an industrial scale. "TrashVintage" is a very niche product, elite. It cannot be released for sale in furniture hypermarkets. We will defend its uniqueness and family nature, especially since we like such a soulful approach to work. We remake furniture and put a piece of ourselves into it.