They Don't Make 'Em Like They Used To

I was feeling crafty on Friday and decided to skip work and school work in favor of a project that I've been meaning to accomplish since Thanksgiving. Jesse's parents have been cleaning out their house to move to Virginia for a year and we were the lucky recipients of a few really cool pieces of furniture. We initially took home two dining dining chairs in November that belonged to Jesse's grandmother. I had grand plans of having the seats recovered in time for the arrival of the other two chairs this past week when Bob & Mary Ann visited. For multiple reasons, the recovering never happened. It's not like it's hard to recover a dining room chair. I estimated that it would take about an hour tops per seat.

As I embarked on this project mid-morning Friday, I was sure they'd be done in time for dinner. The only problem was that I never really bothered to look at the seat construction to figure out how exactly they were put together. Needless to say, my time estimates were terribly misguided. My apologies in advance for the photos (that look like they've been taken through screen door). My poor little dying camera was barely able to eek them out before going dark forever.

After ripping off the under layer of some very old-looking linen, I realized that the needlepoint covers (so carefully made by Jesse's grandmother) were held on by no less than three million upholstery tacks. Underneath the needlepoint covers was a fine muslin, also firmly secured with another dense layer of tacks. The hammer was of little use removing the tacks, so I opted instead for a flat-head screwdriver to pry them out. Once I removed the double layer of cloth, I flipped over the seat to inspect the padding.

Holy Crap! Lambswool and horsehair. I tugged gently at the contents and realized that they were also nailed to the frame. Yay. Who knew that horse hair would be so scratchy and easily secured by nails? Also, it was very very dusty. I tied a scarf around my face for the remaining portions of this deconstruction.

If this project were intended for any other chair, I think I might have just given up. But I really love the chairs and was determined to make them shine again.

After about three hours of tugging and ripping, I was finally down to the wooden frame of the first seat cover. You can see the guts that were ripped out, which included an old burlap sack tacked to the frame underneath the wool and horsehair padding. The sack covered jute strapping that you see here, which is also securely tacked to the frame with no less than six nails each. Somewhere out there is an upholstery tack salesman who is still rolling in all the cash he made from just these four chairs.

The first seat left me feeling slightly defeated, but I am determined to finish the other three this weekend, because if I don't keep up the momentum the chairs might just sit in a corner forever unfinished. After dusting off my sweatpants and vacuuming up what looked like piles of pubes in the dining room, I'm feeling pretty good about my progress. Two frames are completely stripped down and ready to go and the other two only have the burlap and jute strapping left to tackle. My fingers feel worn to the bone, but as an incentive I took a little break today to finalize my research on a new camera. It should arrive early next week, just in time to capture the final product!