Welcome to The Repair Shop,
where cherished family heirlooms are brought back to life.
Anything can happen. This is the workshop of dreams.
Home to furniture restorer Jay Blades.
Nowadays, things are not built to last,
so we've become part of this throwaway culture.
It's all about preserving and restoring.
We bring the old back to new.
Working alongside Jay will be some
of the country's leading craftspeople...
I like making things with my hands.
I love to see how things work and want to know how things work.
Whether it's a Rembrandt or somebody's family piece,
every painting deserves the same.
..each bringing their own unique set of skills.
You're about to witness some magic.
They will resurrect...
revive... Oh, yes.
..and rejuvenate
treasured possessions
and irreplaceable pieces of family history.
Oh, my goodness me. It looks like it's new!
Bringing both the objects...
Oh, wow!
..and the memories that they hold back to life.
Thank you.
In the Repair Shop today,
furniture restorer Will Kirk shivers the timbers of a seafaring chest.
I'm actually worried, feeling the surface -
you feel that there's a bit of lipping there,
where the wood has moved and warped and changed.
There seems to be a lot more work than I first thought.
And ceramics conservator Kirsten Ramsay
attempts a seamless repair on a '70s bowl.
My oldest son pushed it against the wall, and did that to it.
I mean, it's really rather spoilt, unless you've got a banana hanging
over the edge or something, it spoils the appearance of it.
Yeah, I know. Absolutely.
But first, seeking some essential first aid for a cherished possession,
Ian McFadyen is hoping clockmaker Steve Fletcher can breathe new life
into a century-old family heirloom.
What have we got there, then?
Here we have my grandfather's old cuckoo clock,
which is in dire need of love and attention, I think.
OK.
Wow! That's nice. It's a beautiful old clock. It's really nice.
I mean, it is Victorian.
And there's a bird... Is there a bird in there?
Oh, absolutely. Yeah? Yeah, but it only goes "cuck".
It only goes "cuck"? It's lost its "oo"?
It doesn't go "oo", or it could be the other way round.
I can't remember. Right, OK. It doesn't do the whole "cuckoo".
You said this was your father's. How long did your father have it? It was my grandfather's.
Your grandfather. My grandfather's, so it was my mother's cherished possession.
You know, I mean, you replace furniture, you replace carpets.
Yeah, yeah. Cars come and go.
Yeah. Everything. But that's something that's consistent
and my mother died in 2000,
and I want to be able to hand that down to my son or my daughter.
Whoever wants it in my family.
Yeah. It's a family heirloom, so I would just love to get it fully
restored, back to how it should be.
The tone of the cuckoo, when it works, is gorgeous.
It's that deep, rich sound. It's got a really, really deep,
rich cuckoo sound. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely beautiful.
There's a bit of woodwork, as well.
There's the top of a leaf missing there and another top of a leaf
missing there. So, basically, what you'd like us to do with this
is repair it, get it cuckooing again.
And then do something with the woodwork, as well.
Yeah. Cosmetically, I'm hoping that the whole thing can actually be made
solid and look as it would have done, you know,
when it was pride of place. Thank you. Thank you very much indeed.
Yes, nice to meet you. Look forward to seeing the finished results.
Yeah. Thank you. Bye-bye, now.
Every time I think of that clock, I think of my mum and dad.
My mother died of cancer in 2000, my father died seven years later.
I've got a feeling Mum and Dad will be looking down, you know,
seeing that I've...
Sorry.
It's a lot of history in that.
It is a lot of history and when we get it up ticking and working
and cuckooing, it will mean a lot to him.
Yeah, it does mean so much to him.
It will mean a lot. Yeah. I'm on a quest.
I've got to get it working and I've got to get it in pride of place back in
the home, where I feel it belongs rightly in the family.
The exact origins of cuckoo clocks are shrouded in the mists of time,
but the cuckoo clock as we know it today began being produced by the "Uhrmacher" of
the Black Forest area of Germany from the mid-18th century.
The cuckoo noise is made by a set of small bellows,
powered by the clock mechanism inside.
The actual leather on the bellows is
rotten and absolutely shot away, so I've got to renew that completely.
Some Sellotape over there,
just to cover up the holes in the fabric there.
And this one's split open completely, as well.
Absolutely rotten.
There we are.
So the cuckoo here, it looks intact and that should work perfectly.
So under its wings,
we've got some stripes which shows that there are some paintings and
markings on the bird.
Can you see the beak opening?
Usually the beak gets broken off.
That's all intact.
So the case, actually, is
a much bigger job than at first glance, actually.
To help get the clock really singing,
Steve is recruiting furniture restorer Will to work his magic on
the carved case.
Steve, I hear you have something for me.
I do. It's a bit of a challenge, I'm afraid.
It's missing the leaf there, there, and there.
So we need some new bits carved up for it.
Lovely. I'll be sleeping in the workshop tonight.
I'll get on with that. OK. Good, good.
The Repair Shop has tools and the talent
to deal with any restoration challenge.
No matter how big, how small, how old, or how new.
Kirsten's the young lady you need to see.
Thank you very much. Right, thank you.
Up next for ceramics conservator Kirsten,
a piece from the late-20th century belonging to David Ash.
Look at that. It's a lovely bowl.
It's nice, isn't it? Yeah, yeah. Really lovely.
It looks very of its period.
Yeah. And very much sort of back in fashion, I would say.
Is it? Yeah. This is a bowl that my wife and I purchased in a place in
Devon called Chagford.
And I'm not sure who made this, but the initials are on the bottom.
Right. Yeah.
And we bought it in about 1973.
Yeah. And we had it for a number of years before my eldest son pushed it
against the wall, and did that to it. I mean, it really rather spoilt it,
unless you've got a banana hanging over the edge or something,
it spoils the appearance of it.
Yeah, I know. Absolutely. It looks to me like someone's had a go at
restoring that. Could I be right?
Yes, I had a go myself,
with some putty and it looked like Plasticine that you could mix up.
You could mix them up and try and match the colour.
Oh. Which I did not a bad job of.
OK. But the problem was that after I had fired it at low temperature in
the oven... Yes.
..it fell off. Yeah, if you're happy to leave this with me...?
Yeah. OK. I'll come back. All right. That's lovely. Thank you very much.
I'm going to clean that off,
just to make a really nice surface to fill onto.
I can't throw this away,
because I can remember what it felt like to buy it on the day that we
bought it and throwing it away would be like throwing that memory away.
First, to fill the gaping gap in David's bowl,
Kirsten is bringing out her secret weapon,
one you can pick up in any well-stocked garage.
I'm actually just going to use a car body filler, which is what I use on
ceramics like this.
It's like a polyester resin.
It will be great on this because, actually, it cures very quickly,
so it means I can pop it in there and be sanding it back within sort
of ten, 15 minutes.
It's quite difficult to get white fillers that are reversible and that
also don't react with the paint.
I think, quite often,
practical people will actually often have a go themselves but, more often
than not, they're actually just not very happy with the result that
they achieve, so they end up bringing it to me anyway.
So I'm just going to leave this to harden now and then come back to
it and apply another coat.
The rest of The Repair Shop team are bringing their skills to bear on the
clock that hasn't cuckooed for 17 years
and Steve's eagle eye has spied another member
of the animal kingdom hitching a ride inside.
Look at this.
That's a hare. This was the trademark of
Philipp Haas & Sohne of St Georgen,
in the Black Forest.
OK. That his, like, trademark?
That's his brand. Yeah, the hare was the trademark of the company.
Which means it's going to be in the 1880s,
because this wasn't registered until 1883.
Meanwhile, Will is beavering away at restoring the carvings on the case.
This mahogany's quite soft.
It's quite easy to carve. If you're carving with the grain, then you're all right, but sometimes,
if you sort of catch it going across the grain of the wood,
it can always catch and split out
and then you've got more work on your hands.
You've got to glue it back and start again.
So you always have to be mindful of
the grain direction when you're chiselling.
I'm just cutting off the old bellow material.
I'm going to try and cut it back up to the paper.
I'll then cut some new fabric.
Jay, that glue I gave you. Did it come with a blue clip, by the way?
Actually, this is all right, mate.
Sure. I went to all that trouble.
Actually, I might need that. Yeah, you do need it now, don't you?
You have to make sure that
everything is absolutely perfectly true.
This work is critical to the going of a clock -
or the good going of a clock.
Come for a little bit of a nosey.
Yeah. We are doing really well on it, actually.
Got the... Oh, wow! ..the movement all up together.
I'm just testing it on this test rig.
Yeah. Strike coming up.
And then we've got the "cuck," and then the "oo".
Ooh! Do that again!
OK, I'm just going to cover these screw holes there,
because once it's in the case, they'll be covered, so you've got a...
CUCKOOING
Wow! That's the "cuck," or the "oo," and then the other one.
HOOTING
Wow! This is basically just like blowing over the top of a bottle and
making a noise. You hold on to that one.
All right. Lift with that little ring there and just drop it quickly.
That's it, that one.
CUCKOOING
We're not in time now, are we? You go first. That's fine.
That's absolutely fine. Let me have a listen.
You go. That's a new "cuck".
New "cuck". There you go.
A new cuckoo clock. Yeah!
THEY LAUGH
The Repair Shop team is always on call to answer customer Maydays.
A new arrival has just dropped anchor in the workshop
and has caught the eye of Jay...
Here, Will. I think this is one for you, mate.
Have a look at this.
..and fellow furniture restorer Will.
Oh, yes. Very nice.
That's mine. It's got my name all over it.
Hello. Hello, there.
The piece that's piqued their interest has been in
Chrissie Thornhill's family for two centuries.
It's come down the Thornhill family from my five-times grandfather...
Wow! ..who was born in 1752 and he was a sea captain.
He was a master mariner.
Right. And he had ten sons,
about five of whom all became sailors, as well.
Really? So, there's a lot of salty sea dogs in there.
So it's been on its travels, then?
This has had a lot of... It's certainly been all over the place and heaven knows where.
I mean, you can sort of see from the marks on the top,
I think it would have been carried onto the ship, because of the handles.
You probably had to keep it in the centre of the ship,
just to sort of keep the balance.
If the balance goes!
So, Chrissie, what work needs doing to this?
It has got rather a nasty crack right across the front.
Also, the front drawer comes down into a desk which, as you can see,
is in need of a little bit of attention, I think.
Then the top? The top has got so much history - I mean,
all those scratches and marks and everything,
to sort of have all of those go,
I think it would lose some of the history, so
I don't know what you can do, but I'm sure you can do something -
that some of that will still be there.
It is really nice to keep a lot of these old scratches and marks and
everything, rather than it looking too brand-new.
However, I do think, at the front, it's pretty bleached out by the sun.
And it would be quite nice to have it looking like mahogany,
rather than a bit of beech. That would be wonderful, yes.
So, I would say, would you be happy with sort of maybe, sort of,
one of the mid-tone colours here,
something around this kind of chestnutty-brown?
That would be smashing, yeah.
Once this is repaired, where would this be?
It's not going to be going on any more ships, is it? I don't think so.
OK. It's going back to... I live with my mum...
Right. ..who I care for,
and it's been in our living room for the last 30-odd years.
OK. And one of the reasons I would really like it back to sort of full
working order is because I write,
and I would really love to sit at this desk and write,
which I've never been able to do...
Yeah. ..and get all that inspiration from all these sea stories...
Yeah. ..maybe to write my bestseller. No pressure!
You take care now, OK? Thanks a lot, Will.
Thank you. Wow!
200 years of history.
I know. Exciting. It is.
As a writer, to be able to sit at something that has so much
connection with the past and my family down through the generations,
I'm sure it's just going to be so hugely inspirational.
It's a shame these marks can't talk... Yeah.
..and tell us where it has been and stuff.
I'm really excited to get stuck in.
Well, I'm going to leave this one with you. To drag back to my bench?
I've got work to do. See you later, mate.
See you in a bit.
With 200 years of seafaring history in his hands,
Will needs to navigate a way of repairing the chest without losing
any of its character.
I'm going to start with the structural work,
lose that crack completely,
but there's a reason why there's a crack and that's because, with all
the weight on the inside, with all the drawers and the extra pieces
of wood, the constant pulling and pushing and pulling, pushing,
her drawer has actually dropped down.
You push it back in and the inevitable is going to happen.
It's got to split off on the front.
Then it's just getting stuck into the polishing, which is, I think,
the trickiest job, because it's getting that colour right,
the finish right, not wanting to remove any of the history.
That's where the pressure is really on.
I found something interesting, Jay.
I've taken out the drawer, turned it around,
and you can see, this actually fits in like a puzzle piece.
Is that the reason why it wouldn't shut, as well?
That's the reason it wouldn't shut because, on this side,
you can see that it's nice and flush.
Yeah. But on this side, it's a bit on the ropey side and poking out,
so I think, if we knock that back into place,
the drawer should go back in.
Over in clock corner, Steve has got his project mechanism running
like... well, clockwork.
He is now giving the battered old bird its first bath for
over 100 years.
Cor, blimey! Come out well, hasn't it?
Yeah. That's quite exciting, isn't it? Yeah, it is very exciting.
And amazing the amount of dirt! You've got oil on there,
you've got glue on there, you've got polish on there.
You've got everything. It's just a build-up of layers and layers of
stuff, so that's why I've had to use some acetone to clean it up.
That is amazing.
Steve has one other last-minute fix to perform by repairing the bone
hands of the clock.
So I've cleaned up the minute hand.
You can see, I haven't cleaned up the hour hand yet.
You can see, it's got a bit missing.
Yeah. Well, I've got a piece to make for that.
Is that dinner?
What's that? So it's some bone that I got from the pet shop.
That's real... That's meat, isn't it?
Yeah, it is. It's real bone, so I'm going to cut a sliver off of that,
and I'm going to carve it up and attach it to the hand.
Your talents are endless, aren't they?
Animal bone is a common material used by the Black Forest clockmakers
for hands, numerals, and other decorative features.
With the final touches completed,
Ian is back to be reunited with his cherished timepiece.
How are you doing, Ian? Hello, there. You all right?
Good afternoon. How are you? Very good, very good.
Come and have a look... OK!
..at what we've done. Really looking forward to it.
Can't wait.
There. Oh!
Oh, wow!
Yeah, that does look good, doesn't it?
That's a treat. It really is.
Looks gorgeous. I can tell by the smile on your face you like it.
I'm thrilled with it. I can see, you know, it looks beautiful.
Now, the big test...
is the sound. Yeah?
CUCKOOING
That's it.
Isn't that lovely?
Now I'm getting emotional. Bless you.
The whole thing just makes me think of my mum...
Which...
..is pretty sentimental.
Do you know what, Ian?
This gives me the greatest of pleasure,
to do a clock up that means so much to somebody
and to see your reaction, it is just wonderful.
It makes me feel really proud of what I do, actually.
It was unfinished business.
It was something that...
..played on my conscience,
the fact that the clock didn't work and it's now resolved.
So now that it's done, it's quite a weight off of my shoulders,
because it's absolutely perfect.
Thank you very much for repairing it and making it look good again.
CUCKOOING
Meanwhile, Will is hoping for his own perfect restoration result.
His challenge is repairing the 200-year-old captain's chest while
preserving its characterful ocean-going patina.
Now I've had a chance to look at the inside,
there seems to be a lot more work than I first thought.
For one, I'm actually worried, feeling the surface here,
you can feel that there's a bit of lipping there, where the wood
has moved and warped and changed.
So that's even more time, more work and everything else.
With so much to do, Will's press-ganged Steve into action...
We don't have a master key, unfortunately.
..to help unlock the chest's full potential
by finding a replacement for the missing key.
We're trying to find out the size of what it would be.
Oh, there you go.
That's absolutely bang on the right size.
So it would be 50 mil.
Thanks for that, Steve.
And we've done a bit more ageing to the top of this chest,
which is brilliant.
Thanks, Steve.
With Steve on key duty,
Will can get on with preparing the desk for active service by restoring
the writing area.
To replace the old green baize on the surface, well, actually,
that's another thing I need to do - I actually have to flatten this off,
so it's all nice and smooth.
One of the problems with laying the leather
is even a tiny bit of dirt will show up on the surface.
It's really unforgiving.
As more problems emerge, it's all hands on deck as the team
try to get it shipshape in time for collection.
That's great. Hold on, he's got all of us working on this.
Well done.
I know. I found an old key.
Yeah. But the bit was not quite long enough.
The wards are in the right place. The wards are...
The wards are the cut-outs. Cut-outs.
Yeah. What I did, I hard-soldered another bit on the end there to
extend it, and it works perfectly.
There you go, sir. Magician!
Thanks very much, Steve. Thanks, mate.
See? So when are you getting back to work? No, no!
THEY LAUGH
What? You've got Steve working on the lock.
You've got me doing... What are you actually doing?
Gosh! I'm having a cup of tea.
Thanks, Steve. It's probably cold now.
So just now, you can see I'm checking the bottom of the leather
to make sure there's nothing on there.
It's always tricky, scoring the edge with a blade.
One sneeze, and you've got yourself a hole in the leather.
And talking of holes to fix,
ceramicist Kirstin has finished the first stage of the repair to
the damaged bowl.
But filling the gap was the easy part.
Now Kirsten must paint her repair to blend in seamlessly with
the original artist's work.
Obviously, the painting is the kind of more difficult bit.
I'm sort of getting my pallet together,
cos it's quite a lot of different colours that are in here,
so I'm just going to start getting rid of the white,
blocking up the white.
That's starting to blend in now.
I used a matt glaze to get the background colour and then,
you can see here, there is some sort of glossy glaze, as well,
so I've gone over with the gloss in places to mimic that glossy finish.
The eye just doesn't really notice it, I don't think.
I just hope that David will be happy.
So now, I just leave it to dry and then
it's ready for David to come and collect.
Hi, David. Hi. How are you? I'm fine.
How are you? Good. Yeah, fine, thank you.
I've done your bowl for you.
Oh, good. I hope you'll be happy.
Oh, wow! That's amazing.
I can't even see where it was.
So where is it? Well, I was hoping you would say that.
I can't see it at all. See if you can spot it.
No, I can't spot it.
I cannot spot it. Good.
Phew! That's amazing.
Let's have a look and see.
Yeah, I can see, actually.
It's just across there.
It's fantastic and it's very, very smooth, as well.
It's beautiful. Don't rub it too hard after I've just finished it!
No, it's quite beautiful.
That is a really impressive job. Terrific.
So, hopefully, you won't have to drape a banana over that corner.
No, no, and I'll have to keep it away from teenagers and walls.
Oh, yes. Yeah, absolutely.
Thank you very much. It's just a fantastic job.
Oh, thank you. We've had this bowl now for about 45 years and it's been
hidden in a cupboard for about 30 of those and subsequently repaired in
four hours, which is fantastically impressive.
And it's just so nice to see it looking like this again.
I would never have thrown it away. That's been the problem with it,
because we have this attitude that either it gets fixed or it has
to go, because it's not being used.
But you can't throw something like this away, I don't think.
After restoring everything below deck on the sea captain's chest,
Will now faces his biggest challenge -
cleaning and varnishing the exterior,
restoring some of the original colour, while retaining the telltale
signs of the desk's 200-year-old history.
Wow!
So you can already see how dirty the surface is.
There's something quite rewarding about doing this.
I'm just doing the finishing touches now.
I'm so happy with the colour.
I think I was quite nervous about the colour in the beginning.
I mean, it looks like an even kind of colour job,
so after buffing this up, it's going to be good to go.
I'll make this good for Chrissie. Yeah. Lovely.
200 years, yeah? Yeah!
Jay, have a look at this.
Are you finished? Yes.
Wow!
Nice? It's nice. That is nice. Guys, you've got to have a look at this.
Will's done some work. Jay, don't embarrass me.
No, it looks good, mate. It does look good. Wow!
Looks amazing, doesn't it? It's beautiful.
Are you going to open the drawers for us?
Just soak in the atmosphere for a second.
I need to see the drawer. First of all, nice and smooth movement.
Nice action there.
The split along the bottom of the top drawer.
What split? Exactly! What split? And then, that...
Oh! Oh, wow! Well done. Nice bit of leather there.
Fantastic. You've done good. Fantastic.
Jay, Kirsten and painting conservator Lucia
are suitably impressed.
But Jay has one last finishing touch
for its owner and budding author Chrissie.
So if you guys are cool with this, I'd like to
do a little bit of a whip-round and we get Chrissie a pen
and a pad for writing her bestseller.
Cos there's bits in there, but it's empty.
200 miles away,
Chrissie and her mother Margaret are eagerly awaiting the return of their
family treasure from its latest voyage.
Are you looking forward to it arriving, Mum?
Of course I am. Mum and I have missed it enormously.
I mean, it's really been like a big hole in the room.
For her to see it in its new state,
I think will be wonderful for her.
Would you like to bring it in round the back?
It's probably easiest if we take it in this way.
Oh, Mum, look at that.
How lovely. Isn't it beautiful?
And a key in it!
Yeah. It's super and they've just kept so much of everything.
That crack at the front, I mean, you can't spot it at all.
I mean, it's like magic.
Oh, yes, and there's a lovely green.
Isn't it? Oh, how lovely!
Well, I'm looking forward to sitting and writing on that.
You'll be inspired.
Are you pleased? Oh, I'm delighted, my love.
Oh, that's it. What's that?
Oh! A pen.
Oh! A notebook.
"To Chrissy. Something to inspire your writing.
"With love, The Repair Shop."
Isn't that wonderful? So kind.
This is where I'm going to write my bestseller and I'll probably start
it on the pages of this wonderful book.
It's absolutely wonderful to have the chest back and seeing it looking
the way that it does,
oh, it's just tremendous.
It really is a showpiece.
My husband would have thought, you know,
"How wonderful."
And to see it restored to a time when his ancestor first had it,
he'd be very pleased.
Join us next time as more precious pieces are rescued and their
cherished memories restored in The Repair Shop.