I've had an oak mission-style rocking chair for many years, and in that time, it's been reupholstered twice. Thanks, Granna! This time, however, it was up for a pretty major overhaul; it would be bad if it collapsed while we were rocking the Bean! So we called Auntie Jen.
Scraping off old glue and varnish from the joints:
Examining an odd bit of chair engineering with Grampa: "Really? That's all that holds it together?"
(In the bottom corner, you can see the underside of the seat, whose fabric I was attempting to remove - staple by staple - and two old layers of upholstery fabric.)
The bottom half of the chair complete. And what would be the fun of a project like this if it didn't involve teasing the cat with quilt batting?
Enlarging the holes to fit the new bolts that hold the back to the arms. Auntie Jen has cool power tools! (And she's really good with white finish nails, too.)
And today, the chair moved into its new home - a hippo chair on a hippo rug. And Luna, so glad that we have put so much work into her chair! (Little does she know...)
Oh, yeah... that is INDEED "all that held it together"!!!... and it looks fantastic! Thank you, Auntie Jen, for protecting Bean from rocking chair implosion. Granna has the fabric to recover current dining chairs, but screw holes are so stripped, chairs rock so badly, I'm wondering if the job is even worth the effort.. why waste good fabric on chairs that are going to fall apart? (and they're not old enough to be worth rescuing...we're really talking 70's - 80's junk here)
ReplyDeleteBean's rocker, on the other hand, is a mission thing of beauty and a joy forever.
I should mention that Eliza gets MAJOR points for bravery as I nailed upholstery tacks home *between her fingertips* while she held the fabric taut!! It was fun to work with you, babe!
ReplyDelete-Jen
Grinning.. and imagining the team work... last time I worked on that chair, Eliza was on a ladder, reworking a ceiling light fixture in Bay Ridge. We swore a lot, but swore alone!
ReplyDeleteIt's a great chair... so glad it's hippo'd and happy'd for the next generation.