March 28, 2024

By ASHLEY WELFORD-COSTELLOE

The interior decorating students and faculty had their work cut out for them when they had to gather up old chairs and re-purpose them in creative ways for a “Chairity” Gala, where these works of art were put up for bid through a live and silent auction.

“We actually acquired chairs that were either purchased from thrift stores or picked up off the side of the road,” said Brandy Hillar, a second-year interior decorating student.

Students were assigned the project at the beginning of September and it was due the last week of November. They were required to work on the chairs on their own time as they had other projects as well. This meant coming in on Friday evenings.

Each group of students had to come up with their own design. Emma Ulakovic and Brandy Hillar wanted to incorporate light into their chair, which proved to be difficult at times. One of the issues they had was trying to find something that would give their chair a high gloss as they wanted to spray paint it black. Another issue was upholstering the chair.

“We thought this was going to take a couple hours on a Friday night,” said Ulakovic. “Little did we know, two Friday nights later and at least 12 hours of work, we finally finished the upholstery.”

“Trying to incorporate light was difficult,” said Hillar. “Our brainstorming period was very long because we wanted to incorporate light into our chair, but we (couldn’t) be restricted to an outlet. We ended up using LED touch lights, but it was a long process.”

The students worked in groups of three so they could learn the necessary teamwork skills which are used in the interior decorating industry.

All proceeds from the ticket sales and the auctions went to the Hospice of Waterloo Region.