Brunetti was so insistent on making her teaching dream a reality that she paid to remodel the building out of her own pocket.
Brunetti opened ChairDo in late 2015, teaching reupholstery and sewing classes to a wide array of students. Many of the students have found her classes therapeutic, she said.
“I have four students that lost loved ones, and all they did was cry,” Brunetti said. “When they find ChairDo, they’re so excited and so busy [reupholstering] that it was a lot of comfort for them. ... They call this [their] happy place.”
Before setting up her shop in Texas, Brunetti had a sewing business in Nevada. While she enjoyed the business, she said she felt like something was missing since she had little interaction with her customers. By teaching classes, she gets to do what she loves every day.
“I can make more money doing the [reupholstery] business. Teaching requires many other things: being patient, being loving because you need to love what you do,” Brunetti said. “It’s all about finding the right person to teach you. Teaching is such a challenge. It’s a privilege.”
Brunetti’s classes are by appointment only and have a maximum of three students in each class due to the pandemic. The reupholstery class walks students through the process of redoing a chair, while the sewing class teaches students to make pillows, she said.
“It is all about the shop [and] trying to get the shop comfortable for my students,” Brunetti said.
Some of her students travel a long way to take her class, flying in from places such as Brazil or New York, she said. In the future, Brunetti said she hopes to have more students to pass along her teaching skills.
“[I] have something that I want to share with other people, and I’m not going to keep it for myself,” she said.
