My wife, Amanda, loves to take old, unwanted furniture a give them new life by giving the pieces a fresh face-lift. She calls this “reloving” which is an appropriate term because when they’re finished people love what she did. It really is an art form. She’s done this to dressers, vanities, end tables, dining tables and chairs. It’s a rewarding hobby for her.

One day she was making some old chairs nice again in the garage, and I wanted to capture her at work. I wanted to document the effort and process. I wasn’t interested in before-and-after photos. Instead, I wanted to show the work itself. I wanted to capture the dust. I wanted to capture what it takes to do this kind of thing, to show behind-the-scenes of reloving furniture.

These photographs were captured using a Fujifilm X100F, which is a great tool for this type of documentary photography. It captures great images without fuss and doesn’t get in the way. I was able to capture these pictures of Amanda working and not bother her too much in the process. I think one day she’ll really appreciate that I took these pictures.