Meet Maria at My Furniture Attic: The Wooden Furniture Restoration Expert Bringing Personality To Your Home

Perhaps it’s an Ercol chair that’s been part of family life for decades, a G-Plan sideboard discovered in a vintage shop or a dining table that has witnessed countless family meals. These pieces have character. They have history. And, with a little care, they can become part of the next chapter of a home.

That’s exactly what Maria at My Furniture Attic loves about vintage and mid-century furniture.

Having spent the last six years sourcing and selling vintage and mid-century wooden furniture, and the past four years restoring and refurbishing pieces, Maria has built a business around helping people discover the joy of furniture with a past. From British classics such as Ercol and G Plan to a variety of Scandinavian designers, she has a real eye for spotting the potential in pieces that might otherwise be overlooked, from dining tables, chairs and desks to stools and sideboards.

But for Maria, it’s about much more than furniture.

A self-confessed people person, she loves getting to know her customers, hearing what they want from their homes and helping them create spaces that feel genuinely personal. Her Northern Swedish heritage has given her a lifelong appreciation for beautifully crafted wooden furniture, and she believes the pieces we choose for our homes should bring us joy, tell a story and feel like they belong to us.

As you’ll discover, sourcing and restoring furniture with Maria is about creating a home you love, with pieces that have meaning and will hopefully be treasured for years to come.

Q: What kind of work do you do at My Furniture Attic

The main focus of my business is sourcing mid-century and vintage furniture classics, such as Ercol, Mobler and G-Plan, to either refurbish to sell on or supply to customers who want to add personality to their homes. My Northern Swedish heritage is really what makes me passionate about unique, high-quality furniture. I grew up surrounded by beautifully hand-crafted, wooden furniture and saw the joy it brought to my family.

Finding furniture with a story behind it is the perfect way to add character to your home. I love helping people to enhance the pieces they’ve already got in their homes and I love guiding my customers through the process of sourcing and restoring pieces which brings them joy. My Furniture Attic’s main goal is to help people curate their perfect home.

Q: What makes working with My Furniture Attic so special?

I genuinely want to make things as perfect as possible for my customers. Sourcing and restoring furniture for your home doesn’t have to be daunting and I’m here to show you that it’s a fun and exciting process. I love it when people bring things to me that need refinishing, like a dining table for example. I often get customers who want the perfect dining chairs to pair with their table. So I invite them into my workshop where we go over my stock together, I pour them a cuppa and get to know them and what they want from their home. I show them how I can bring their pieces to life and really drill down into what it is they want from their home and the furniture they’re putting into it.

We come up with a plan together and I keep my customers updated throughout the project, collaborating on colours and finishes and making sure everything I do ties in with their style and needs. My customers often say how much they enjoy the experience of working with me and how it is much less daunting than they thought it would be.

Customers see the potential of their homes and gain the confidence to have fun with their furniture. It’s so much fun curating a home you love and it’s my favourite thing to help my customers with that. The process of sourcing and restoring your furniture shouldn’t just be transactional – it’s an experience you thoroughly enjoy. My customers end up loving the process of restoring their furniture just as much as the end product.

Q: What’s your favourite thing about your work?

There’s not just one favourite thing – it’s a combination of people and the stories they have about their furniture. Often, they have so much love for that item and it’s always fascinating hearing all about its history – that really feeds into how I refurbish the piece. I also love it when a piece is delivered back to a customer and hearing their reaction. Getting a delighted ‘thank you’ message once the courier has delivered something back into their home brings a huge level of satisfaction. It’s so brilliant to know I’ve done a good job. Because, no matter how big or small the piece I’m working on, I always get anxious waiting for feedback – I really care about my customers and getting their projects right for them.

Q: And finally, have you got a favourite project that’s really stuck with you?

There’s too many really but there is one which has always stayed with me. I had a lovely lady commission me to work on two Fireside Ercol chairs and some drawers which had belonged to her parents. Each of the pieces had such special memories for my customer but they needed lots of TLC and modernisation to make them usable and loved again.

This project was a meaningful one in particular, as I quite quickly realised time was not on our side as my customer was in the final stages of cancer. She asked me to refinish her cherished furniture so it could be passed down to her daughter and kept in her family. These pieces would mean she could leave something behind as a connection to them and she wanted to keep her family memories alive through the furniture.

I was so happy to be entrusted with these pieces and worked with her to sensitively refurbish and modernise the chairs and drawers. This was such detailed job and I had to be so careful with it, especially with the chair carvings. I kept my customer updated as I went along and she loved seeing the process of bringing her furniture back to life for her family.

Sadly, she passed away the week before they were ready, so her daughter ended up collecting the pieces, and it felt special to pass them back. It was the biggest honour to work on these family heirlooms for such a beloved Mother.

Wooden Furniture With A Story

From beautifully crafted British-designed chairs, to Scandinavian tables and family heirlooms carrying decades of memories, Maria at My Furniture Attic is proving that old furniture can have so much more to give.

Her work isn’t simply about sanding, refinishing or restoring a piece to its former glory. It’s about understanding why a piece matters to someone, taking the time to get to know the person behind it and creating something that feels right for their home and their life.

And perhaps that’s what makes Maria’s approach to furniture restoration so special. She doesn’t just see an old piece of furniture. She sees its potential, its history and the opportunity to give it another chapter.

If you’ve got a piece of furniture sitting at home that you’re no longer quite sure what to do with, or you’re looking for that perfect vintage piece to bring personality into your space, visit My Furniture Attic’s profile and start creating a home filled with furniture you truly love.