Diana Fearis and Cindy Law have been best friends for years.

They met in school at the age of five. Ms Law admired Ms Fearis’s ringlets; Ms Fearis liked Ms Law’s big family.

“We’d have sleepovers together and talk about boys all night,” said Ms Fearis.

Now 61, they still love getting together but the conversation has matured.

Their passion is furniture restoration. Together, they improve pieces of furniture under the moniker, The Painted Ladies.

“We used to meet up at the gym on our lunch hours,” said Ms Law. “But then I retired from my job as vice president of AIG.

“I now look after my granddaughter full-time and meeting up at the gym isn’t practical anymore.”

To keep their longstanding friendship going they turned to what they loved as children — art.

“When we were children at Mount Saint Agnes we were in an after-school art class together,” said Ms Law. “We loved it.

“Diana stuck with art more than I did. I was more into photography, but I always loved furniture.

“I would read furniture magazines and clip out furniture that I liked. Now I love [the website] Pinterest because I find lots of ideas there.”

They started calling themselves The Painted Ladies last year after their first sale to friends and family.

“My husband, Martin, says it sounds like a bordello,” said Ms Law with a laugh. “But we like it and we’re sticking with it. We laugh a lot while we’re working. We découpage. We hand-paint. We have great fun.”

An old trunk, a rocking horse, bookends, drawers and chairs are among the many items for sale on Saturday.

They find their treasures at house sales, The Barn, and sometimes their own homes.

Sometimes their experiments don’t work out.

A table with an America’s Cup theme “was just a mess”; something went wrong when they poured the resin for the tabletop.

The hardest part is pricing. They believe they could never recoup all the hours they put into things.

“We have to really like it before we finish,” Ms Law said.

“If something isn’t looking right we say ‘put that away. We’ll do something else and come back to it.’ Sometimes items go through several different colours before we feel they’re right.”

According to Ms Fearis, the projects were really just labours of love, with lots of laughs along the way.

“These are two very key ingredients for happiness and contentment,” she said. We can confide in each other and trust each other unconditionally. I’ve always said it’s so important to have friends in our lives and I feel very fortunate to have Cindy in my life, not only as my best friend but now as a business partner going into our retirement years.”

See their work on Saturday from 10am to 4pm at Glenhaven, #2 Three Chimneys Lane, Devonshire.

Look for The Painted Ladies Home Decor on Facebook.