Brian and Meda Weir
One of our hobbies is gardening at our home in Calahoo, Alberta. As well as a colourful array of flowers each summer, and we enjoy vegetables fresh from the garden.
We both grew up in homes filled with antiques, on farms in Southern Ontario. Living with antiques feels like home. We love blending the old with the new.
One of the hobbies we love is dancing the two-step and line dance dancing, it keeps us young and limber. We're real westerners now, we've lived in Alberta for about the last 25 years. I think Brian was always a westerner at heart. We also lived in the western USA, in Burnsville and Farmington Minnesota, for a few years while Brian worked on a project there.
Summer will find us enjoying fresh vegetables from our garden. Sanding antiques and catching up on getting a bit of sunshine.
Our two wonderful sons, Michael and Mark are very encouraging and we've been fortunate that they also enjoy woodworking. They keep giving us more tools, so I guess they know what we like.
One of our nephews is also in the business of woodworking, he creates chainsaw sculptures and furniture from logs.
Check out Rob's Rustics
Our Beginnings in Furniture Restoration
In a farming community in Southern Ontario in a little hamlet called Stewart Hall a hobby of collecting and preserving antiques was born.
My first project was my Grandma’s steamer trunk—antique experts would likely have been horrified that I chose to paint it black and trim it in gold. My next project was a small washstand of no account that was left behind by a border. I stripped it and stained it but because it was pine it didn't quite meet with my expectations of grandeur on completion.
From that point on I picked up treasures here and there some I left in the original state, while others I refinished.
When I married my true love Brian George Weir of Keene Ontario in 1969 we inherited some more wonderful antiques.
My father-in-law also enjoyed restoring and refinishing antiques many of which we were pleased to add to our collection and still have today. On our porch is an old summer couch, which I continually threaten to sell. After retirement Dad decided he would redo the old couch. After many long hours of sanding he discovered that it was pine and promptly painted it again. He was not too happy about that.
An English oak dining room table and six chairs that sits in our dining room was my husbands first refinishing project to my knowledge—we obtained a homemade recipe for stripping furniture containing lye. It was powerful!!
Brian placed the furniture on our yet unseeded lawn and began splashing this powerful solution over the chairs and table with a floor mop. Because of the lye in the solution it could only remain on the furniture for a short time and then needed to be immediately hosed off—I believe that was the one and only time we ever used that recipe!
It required hours of sanding as the powerful solution raised the grain of the wood creating quite a make work project.
We've come a long way baby!!! A hobby that we've enjoyed for over thirty years is now Weir Woodworks. What makes us different is our desire to take your treasure and lovingly restore it just as you want it to be. We aspire to do just that.
Email or call us today we’d love to answer any questions and if we don’t know the answer we will do our best to find one.