Jessica Russell is another Toronto entrepreneur who started a furniture-rehab business while in lockdown. “People got into baking bread. I got into furniture,” says Russell, the former project manager for a residential high-rise developer who now runs Sunday Stroll.
“I noticed people were cleaning house during the pandemic,” says Russell. “You’d walk the streets and find a dresser, a buffet, a dining set. It was free inventory.”
Sundaystroll.ca is filled with throwback pieces Russell has found, restored, repainted or reimagined.
Aside from ever-popular Danish teak sideboards and other pieces of furniture, Russell’s evolving stash listed for sale on her website includes hard-to-find vintage accessories — recently a cute watermelon carafe set and a pink art deco lamp.
But furniture is the mainstay. “One of my favourite things to do is upcycle old radios into cocktail cabinets. They all have different moods,” says Russell.
“In the 1940s, ’50s and ’60s, radios weren’t phones in your pocket; they were giant pieces of furniture,” she says. “Their mid-century modern style is coveted but they’re not functional as it.”
Russell guts the radio and speaker components to accommodate the storage of barware, glassware and bottles. She’ll add blingy hardware. In one instance, she yanked out a turntable, then built a new base for the item. It’s now a drawer for jiggers, cocktail strainers and mixing sticks.
In yet another reinvention, Russell turned a credenza into a snazzy sideboard by colour-blocking it in soft pink and midnight blue paint, then installing fabulous gold legs.
Russell also sources pieces for clients and will tweak them; she’ll customize their existing furniture too. “People will say, ‘I have this buffet and it’s an heirloom and my mother will kill me if I get rid of it and I hate it.’”