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This project took me a total of 2.5 days from start to finish. It started as a simple hammer and paint job, and ended up a complete chair set facelift. Now we have four chairs that not only match, but that are updated and will match the finished dining room.

Although I am fairly happy with the finished product, as usual, I learned a few things.

What I would do different next time:
- Prime before painting. Will I ever learn?
- Sand better the caning that holds the seat in place on the fourth chair
- Sand and paint the caning earlier on so that it’s completely dry when I hammer it in place
- I’m not sure if I would do the seat of the fourth chair the same again. The original flat-cushion method was simpler and would have matched two of the other chairs.

catbird :: May.17.2001 :: house stuff :: Comments Off

With my new plan in mind, I made my shopping list:

- Off-white paint (I ended up with Martha Stewart Magnolia White)
- Fabric for the seats (an linen-colored calico with a subtle white print)
- Fabric for cushions (a white calico with a very subtle white paisley print)
- Ribbon for the cushion ties (a sheer 1.25″ white ribbon)
- Pillow stuffing

Once armed, I cleaned each chair and removed the padded seats from two of them. Then I painted. Each chair took two coats of paint (I should have primed….) The green one and black one took three coats in some spots. Each chair took about a half hour to paint each coat, totalling four hours of painting.

While the paint was drying, I removed the old fabric from the two seats. This padding was fine to keep. When I bought these chairs about 5 years ago, my Dad re-padded and re-covered the seats.  These seats were very easy to re-cover:

What I did to re-cover the seats:
- Cut the fabric to be about an inch larger than the seat
- Ironed the creases out of the fabric
- Covered the padding and seat and flipped the seat over
- Stapled the fabric to the back of the wood base with a staple gun
- Screwed the seats back into the chairs once the paint was dry

So, here I was, back with the original chair. I needed to secure the wood piece under the seat, cut and glue fabric in place, stuff the seat with batting, and glue the piece of caning into the groove to hold it all together.

What I did to put a new padded seat on was:
- Laid the fabric over the seat area and cut it about a half an inch larger than the hole
- Used a glue gun to secure three sides of the fabric into the groove around the seat
- With three sides secure, stuffed the seat area with batting
- Secured the last side with the glue gun
- Sanded and painted the caning (bright glossy white)
- Applied wood glue to the bottom and sides of the caning
- With a clean, soft, thick cloth over the caning and chair, hammered the caning into the groove

It wasn’t easy, and I could do it better next time, but over all it came out very well. Check out part 4 for evaluation of the final project and what I would do different next time.

catbird :: May.17.2001 :: house stuff :: Comments Off

So, I removed the ugly green fabric. The padding underneath was disgusting. There was no way I was putting it back on the chair. I planned to wash the green fabric and put in new padding. I saved the upholstery tacks as I pulled them off. Some were bent, but most were usable.

Then I pulled out all the old caning. It was fairly easy since it was so old and dried up. I used wire cutters to snip the big pieces off, then used pliers to pull the pieces off. It was dusty, diirty, and disgusting. I scraped out as much of the old glue as I could and re-wahsed the chair.

Looking at the chair with no seat, I reformulated my plan. I decided to take the flat wood piece that previously held the fabric and padding on to the top of the seat and screw it in underneath the chair. Then fill the seat with new padding and cover the top with the fabric. I figured this would be a more classic look and provide a more comfortable seat.

Finally, I cracked open the living room paint and painted the chair. It only needed one coat of the lighter, warmer, flat gray to cover the bluer, glossy gray. The flat gray actually looked nice on the chair - different.

Here’s where this project snowballed in size: I got to thinking…. If I painted all the chairs the same color, that would really pull the set of four together. Not only that, but if I painted them a color that would coordinate with the walls, I’d be one step closer to a finished dining room. So I decided to paint all four chairs off-white and also get some new fabric to replace teh dark green on this chair. In fact, I figured that I would need to recover the seats on two of the other chairs that have fabric seats. To top it off, for some reason I decided that I wanted to make seat cushions that tie onto the chairs.

Am I nuts? Maybe, but you’ll have to read on to part 3 to find out…

catbird :: May.17.2001 :: house stuff :: Comments Off

We have four dining room chairs that don’t match. They are good chairs, charming chairs, but one is black, one wood, one green, and one gray. The gray one is the new one. I recently picked it up for $22 at an antique shop. I made the mistake of not sitting in it before I bought it so I didn’t realize that there was old, broken caning underneath the newer cushion. It was quickly discovered that if you sat on the chair it made loud cracking noises as the old caning popped and the loose wood shifted. Yikes! I don’t have much experience fixing furniture, but I decided to give it a shot. Worst case, I’m out $22 for the chair and I learn some valuable lessons.

The Plan:
- Paint the chair (maybe the same gray as the living room?)
- Remove the fabric cushion and wash it
- Remove the old caning
- Nail in the wood piece more securely

That plan quickly became obsolete in part 2….

catbird :: May.14.2001 :: house stuff :: Comments Off