A project I have started

And I hope I will finish.

I have a pretty bad track record at finishing things I start, especially if the thing takes longer than an hour to complete. Hopefully, if I chronicle my progress here, I will be inspired to actually finish.

Some background:

Much of the furniture in our house came from the trash. I mean, you know, not literally a trash can, but pretty often around here, people decide to get rid of things and they just put them out on the sidewalk for anyone to take. So we take. Because one person's trash is another's treasure.

Here are our most recent acquisitions:



We got four of these chairs and they all basically look like this. They are decent chairs, but they require some cosmetic work, which will take an undetermined amount of time to complete.

1. Remove old cushions.
2. Touch up the wood.
3. Re-cover and reattach cushions.

My sis-in-law re-covered some chairs a few months ago, and they look great. I helped a (very) little bit, and it didn't seem that complicated. I'm still not sure what I'm going to do with the wood, but hopefully that'll come to me later.

So, tonight I started working on the chairs.

The first thing I did was remove the fabric from the upright part of the chair. This was actually pretty freaking hard. The back layer was attached to the chair with a lot of freaking staples. Then there was padding. Then there was the front layer, again with the crapload of staples. Then there was the ribbing around the entire edge. More staples. So I only did one chair. It was hard and I started getting complainy.

Then I (I mean, my husband, under my close supervision) unscrewed the seat cushions from all the chairs.

Here's what we have now:


Upon closer inspection of the nekkid chair, we see:


1. The wood on that decorative middle piece is actually very nice.
2. There are staple holes everywhere. (You may have to click the picture to enlarge it in order to see the staple holes.)

Also, one of the other chairs has wood that looks a little greenish or something.



Ooky!

So here's the plan. A few weeks ago, I bought this fabric at a thrift store. The seat cushions will be re-covered with this.

( Do you see the cute little Autumn butt and tail?)

Also, I will smooth out the wood where all the staples holes and various other imperfections (both previously existing and newly created during the staple removing process) are and will paint the chairs black.

That is the plan.

Ask me about it occasionally will ya? I'd like to get these finished by the end of 2009, and I think I may need some prodding.