Chairs and More Chairs

 I should have taken a picture of what this chair looked like when Joe first brought it home after finding it abandoned in a back room of his office building, just one of those nondescript chairs many of us remember from school. With its light-colored plywood seat and back and metal parts painted a sort of vomit beige, it was more than a little beat up, the wood scratched and nicked. But it had nice clean lines - potential. And it was free.
      It looked much worse after it got left outside in the rain after Joe cleaned the garage - trust me, you should be glad I didn't take a picture of it then - and I wondered briefly if I shouldn't just forget about it. It sat in the garage for longer than I want to admit, but finally I took up the challenge.  

      This project wasn't exactly free; rather, it utilized things we already had: some Kilz white primer to paint over the by now even more disreputable plywood, Mod-Podge, a replica of an old (probably 19th century) map of France, a can of varathane, and some gold spray paint for the metal parts.
     First I lightly sanded everything, wood and metal, then I painted the wood with two coats of primer. When that was dry I sprayed the metal, the bottom of the seat, and the back of the back with a couple of coats of gold. I didn't worry about masking anything because what wasn't gold would soon be covered up; the next step was to cut the map into two pieces to fit the seat and the back, cutting them generously because it's easier to trim off too much than to add in more if you cut it too small.  (Sadly, we won't "always have Paris," because in the process of cutting and pasting it disappeared somewhere between the back of the seat and the bottom of the back piece.)

      I glued the map pieces to the wood with Mod-Podge, working slowly, a bit at a time from back to front on the seat and top to bottom on the back piece to avoid bumps and bubbles and wrinkles. It's not perfect, as the wood surface itself wasn't perfectly smooth, but near enough.
     The picture below shows one of the metal nailheads - there are four on each piece, one on each  corner, attaching the wood to the metal tubing. I didn't put any Mod-Podge on them but otherwise just laid the paper over them and then cut around them with a craft knife while the Mod-Podge was still wet. In a couple of spots I cut a bit too much and had to touch up those places with acrylic paint blended to match the map colors.
     After the Mod-Podge dried, I trimmed off any excess paper along the edges and painted all the paper surfaces with three coats of varathane, letting it dry completely between coats.

      The only thing I actually bought for this project was a couple of yards of 5/8" gold braid that I glued on (with E6000, because that was what I had and I wanted to be sure it would stick forever) to cover the raw edges of the 5/8" plywood. (With a 50% off coupon the braid cost less than $3 at JoAnn.) I bought a lighter shade of gold than I really wanted because I knew it would darken from the varathane I painted over it as part of the fourth and final coat for the chair back and seat. The braid is stiff and hard as a result; it should be as tough and lasting as the rest of the chair.
     The picture below is a preview of coming attractions. Joe found this oak captain's chair by the side of the road while he was out walking one day and brought it home for my study. I'd been using one of those balance ball office chairs, bought on sale and on a whim a few years ago, but the ball had suddenly begun to leak and I'd long ago lost my fondness for the chair as a whole. Its black plastic frame and the green ball really didn't go with anything in the room. Healthy but ugly. So rather than try to fix the leak or buy a new ball, we put the whole assemblage out on the curb and someone quickly took it away, just like Joe took away this chair that someone else no longer wanted. Recycling in its purest form: no money, no middleman, no waste. I love it.

This chair just needs cleaning up with Minwax refinisher or something like that, four nail-on glides for the feet so it doesn't snag the rug, and a nice cushion, and it will be exactly the desk chair I always wanted (though I didn't know it until I saw it).

Found by the side of the road I

I confess, I love to collect things that show promise, i.e., possibilities for repurposing. This item was once a post on our neighbors' bed frame that they put out for the semiannual brush and bulky trash pickup a few years ago. I snagged it and put it at the center of a circular flower bed that has since become a vegetable garden.

It had a dark wood stained and varnished finish then, which the weather eliminated fairly efficiently. It was easy to stand it up in the garden as there was a hole in the bottom, so I sunk a piece of rebar into the ground and then put the post onto it.
     For its later incarnation I didn't sand it or anything; I just used the same techniques to stand it up in a bucket of dirt (using cans to keep it upright and balanced) and painted it with a coat of primer. Hardly high-tech, but it worked.








(That's a kitty litter bucket. They come in very handy for many uses.)

When the primer was dry, I began adding color. I used four colors: gold, turquoise, purple, and red, so I just started with gold and counted the sections, painting all the gold first, then all the purple, turquoise, and finally the red.

 The latex paint came in sample jars from Home Depot, much more paint for less money than buying the craft acrylic at Michael's or JoAnn, and you can have them mix up exactly the color you want for $2.99. I got good coverage with one coat on the first three colors (the purple is much more purple than the pictures show), but the red, not so much, as you can see in the picture below. I eventually wound up putting on 3 coats of red (this picture shows it with only one). Now all that remains is to give it a couple of coats of clear polyurethane, as it's going back outside, sort of, either as a doorpost to the shade house http://morning-glory-garden.blogspot.com/search/label/shade%20house or somewhere in the front entry http://morning-glory-garden.blogspot.com/search/label/ferns. In either case, it won't be subjected to the harsher elements as much as it was in the garden, but it will need more protection than just paint can offer.

One of the things I like best about projects like this is that I didn't buy ANYTHING; every part of it was either found (yep, by the side of the road) or left over from previous projects, like the primer, paints, and polyurethane.  I've got a companion project to go with it that also fits in the "found or leftover" category, but haven't begun work on that one yet. Stay tuned!