A little Chair-ity

I haven't been up to much cottage-y stuff lately. The weekend was a little loco with all the kid stuff that happens. There are some weekends when I suspect there wasn't really a weekend at all. I just go to sleep on Friday night and next thing I know it's Monday morning.

The one thing I have been working on a little bit each day is re-covering the seats of some lovely teak chairs that will go in the cottage kitchen. These items were donated by M'nik (a clark-by-association and therefore good people) when she decided to turn her dining room into an office.

Again, my industrious brain said "re-covering seats? Easy as pie..."

Stupid, stupid brain.

That's not to say the chairs have been hard to do. It's more that they've been interminably tedious. It's my own fault, really. I wanted to strip them down to the wood and reupholster them from that point, rather than just slapping another layer of fabric around them and stapling it in place. Ahaha. I'm an idiot.

Step one: Remove staples that are holding top-most fabric in place. Check.

Step two: Rope your favourite ginger into the doing the dirty work. Check.

Step three: Remove staples that are holding the batting in place. Check.

Step four: Remove staples that are holding the black band in place. I'm sensing a theme. Check.

Step five: Swear at demented Danish chair manufacturer who used spindly, brittle little staples to attach black vinyl band. Check.

Step six: Remove staples that are holding the sisal-y fabric in place. Check.

Step seven: Swear even more at Demented Danish Staple Wielder, bark knuckles on chair bottom repeatedly whilst trying to pull staple shards from wood. Marvel that each chair appears to have required 1 cup of staples. Consider buying proper staple-pulling tool. Abandon staple-pulling to search the Internet for such a beast. Find one about half an hour away for roughly $20. Realize that the staple puller would cost more than the chairs. Swear again and return to pulling staples with a flat-headed screwdriver and needle-nose pliers. Check.

Step eight: Peel back the sisal-y fabric. Yes ladies and gents, that's powdered seat cushion you're looking at. The foam in the seat was rotten. I think I threw up a little in my mouth. Check.

Step nine: Wearing industrial strength rubber gloves and a gas mask (possibly overkill), remove the sisal-y fabric inside a garbage bag to contain the mess. Realize half of the foam is still "good", relatively speaking, and firmly glued to the wooden seat. Dig around in toolbox for something to scrape the powdered foam, good foam, and glue from the wood. In a garbage bag. While wearing rubber gloves, a gas mask, and a pained expression.  I settled on a paint razor. Check.

Finally, I'm ready to start re-covering the chairs!

Chair re-covering:

Step one: Trace wooden seat on 1-in. upholstery foam and cut. I used kitchen scissors. Check.

Step two: Cut chunk of cotton (or polyester) batting larger than the seat by at least 3-in. on all sides.  Check.

Step three: Cut a piece of fabric larger than the seat by at least 3-in. on all sides. More would be better; you need something to grip when you're stapling. While you're at it. Grab your awesome stapler. I love this one, the staple comes out directly under the end of the handle, so as you're pushing down, all the force is over top of the staple. Nice. Check.

Step four: Layer the foam, batting, and fabric on the top of the wooden seat. Flip it over so you're working on the underside. Line up any stripes if you're foolish enough to have picked a fiddly striped fabric. Staple! Check!

Step five: If any of the staples haven't gone in all the way, whack 'em with a hammer. Check.

Step six: Staple like a madwoman (or man) all the way around the chair. Take extra care to gather around the corners. You don't want big, pointy folds. Trim any excess fabric or batting. Check.

Step seven: Fasten the seat onto the chair with Robertson wood screws. No other screw will work. Trust me on this. (Slowly we will convert the world to our Genius Canadian Screws.) Check.

Step eight: Send the new chair to the chair inspector for approval. Kitty approved! Check.

Here are the chairs, before and after. For what it's worth, using the striped fabric was a serious pain in the hiney because you continually have to check that you aren't introducing waves in the lines as you pull the fabric taught.

Oh, and one more recommendation for re-covering the chairs: Use A Lot of Staples. It'll piss off the next person who re-covers the chairs.