An Italian-made wooden lounge chair, stripped of its cushions, stood on the worktable in Gillian Klein’s Shelburne studio getting a sponge bath. She dipped a thin green scouring pad into a tub of soap and water and gently scrubbed away dirt and flecks of old varnish on a slender, graceful arm. The midcentury chair — walnut, she thought — would need its wood conditioned and its cushions replaced, but its springs were tight and intact. Overall, the piece was in great shape.
Klein set it on the floor, put the old black-and-tan-striped cushions back on and reclined for a moment. The seat was wide and low. It felt like something out of “Mad Men,” she said: “You wanna sit back. You wanna cross your legs, and you wanna hold something.” She extended her hand as if she were dangling a cigarette or cradling a martini.
“Furniture’s fun,” she declared.
“I pick up furniture like some people pick up stray animals”
Gillian Klein
Klein, 51, owns and operates ReMaker Furniture in Shelburne, where she repairs, restores, refinishes and reupholsters in her studio half a mile south of the village green. A longtime artist, she started the business five years ago, thinking it would be fun to find old furniture, work on it and sell it.
“I pick up furniture like some people pick up stray animals,” she said.
Among her current collection are an amoeba-shaped coffee table with circular inlaid tile mosaics, a 1985 Danish Møbler trestle table with leaves stored inside and an 11-foot-long bench from a Masonic lodge in central Vermont.
Klein pointed out a big French armoire that she found in Québec. It’s made of bookended flame mahogany that has a high-gloss French finish. “It’s really like mirrored wood,” she said. It may be a reproduction, but that doesn’t matter to Klein because it’s well made. The door hinges still need repair, but she has filled gouges, cleaned the piece and replaced missing metal décor with replicas she cast in plastic.
On a 19th-century American-made chestnut dresser that Klein acquired, all the metal details and one of the wooden drop drawer pulls were missing. She found a virtually identical pull at Architectural Salvage Warehouse in Essex Junction but decided not to replace the ornamental metal plates behind the pulls and around the drawer keyholes. Their imprints remain visible. They were probably brass, Klein surmised, and may have been removed for a metal drive during wartime.
She likes their “ghosts,” she said. “It’s part of the story of what this thing has been through.”
Klein is always on the hunt. Anywhere she stops for gas, she pulls up Craigslist or Facebook Marketplace on her phone to see what might be gathering dust in a house or a barn within a five-mile radius. Once word of her skills got out, people started bringing their furniture to her for repairs or makeovers. Much of her work now is on commission.
She declined to give her hourly rate but said she aims to work within clients’ budgets. She once lent tools and provided directions to a couple so they could start their project and save themselves 30 percent. The prices of found pieces range widely, starting at $100. In addition to her studio, she sells online on Chairish, Craigslist and Facebook Marketplace.
People should love their furniture, Klein believes. Some antique restorers refuse to change the finish of a piece. Klein operates with a more relaxed set of principles: “Make it beautiful. It doesn’t have to be original. And if you love it, then it’s good.” In other words, your grandmother wasn’t trying to burden you when she gave her table to you.
Shelburne interior designer Candy Weston-Kavanagh considers Klein a member of her design team. She consults the furniture restorer when she’s looking for specific pieces or needs something refinished.
“I love how she thinks out of the box and that creative mindset she has, along with honoring the piece she’s working on,” Weston-Kavanagh said.
Sometimes Klein texts her a photo and says, “I thought this looked like you.”
“And oftentimes, she just hits the nail on the head,” Weston-Kavanagh said. In July, when the designer thought she had everything she needed for a camp in the Adirondacks, Klein sent a photo of a chest that had a secret drawer at the bottom.
“It couldn’t be more perfect,” Weston-Kavanagh said. She bought it before she saw it in person “because I trust her so much at this point.”
Klein came to woodworking after a career in the fine arts that followed a circuitous journey through college. She bounced from school to school as she worked toward her undergraduate degree, taking art classes in Florence, Italy, and at Pratt Institute, Bowdoin College and the University of Vermont before finishing at Burlington College. She has taught art, been an assistant to a glassblower and, for about 15 years, worked as an oil painter, creating what she described as large-scale “ethereal cityscapes” and selling them at juried art shows around the country.
Just before starting ReMaker Furniture, Klein spent five years with Healthy Living, designing the displays and general presentation of the grocery stores.
When she wanted to strike out on her own, she realized she had the basic skills needed for furniture restoration: design knowledge, an eye for style and quality, and the ability to work with her hands. “And I have a dear friend who’s an incredible woodworker and a great mentor,” she said.
Todd Rheault, owner of Quartersawn Furniture in Stowe, has been restoring furniture for 35 years. Klein calls him when she needs help identifying wood varieties or recipes for finishes, sheens or color. She’s a quick study, he said: “She figures out the solution more often than not.”
He admires her ability to find unique pieces. “What I’ve always loved is when she takes something that is an outdated style or something that is not hip in the current market and puts some kind of a flair on it,” he said. One chest of drawers stands out in his mind. It was “very plain,” Rheault said, but when Klein painted it with a black diamond pattern, “it made it instantly desirable.”
The update was simple, he said, “but it just changed it dramatically. And that’s the remaker in her.”
Rheault, who recently closed his longtime Burlington studio, no longer accepts new clients. He refers them to Klein.
Find ReMaker Furniture on Instagram. Contact Gillian Klein at remakerfurniture@gmail.com.
The original print version of this article was headlined “Repair, Restore, Reimagine | Gillian Klein of Shelburne’s ReMaker Furniture brings new life to old pieces”
This article appears in Nest — Fall 2025.
Got something to say?
Send a letter to the editor and we'll publish your feedback in print!