2 of the many: Befores

This chair I found across the street from our apartment. Now that we live in a quainter neighborhood than the one directly abutting campus the unfortunate side effect is much less free furniture. I had to take the rare opportunity.

There were actually 2 of the same chair. As you see this one is missing a rung and the screws on top had been replaced with too-long ones so the sharp ends were poking out of the corner (they were covered by band-aids so no one would get hurt!) The other chair had a split seat so we stole the missing rung and screws and left it all sad and worthless - but we now had one full chair!

You can see in the picture that I'd begun painting the area I'd already sanded. It will be a very light grey. Lighter than I was intending in fact, but nice. The top portion has now been completed but I've been putting the rest of it off because ALL I DID in the beginning of the summer was sand! Or so I feel. I don't like using chemicals so the legs of the chair I'm recovering, the mirror frame I repainted, etc. were all scrubbed clean by good, old-fashioned elbow grease. (And look at all those grooves!) Also I need to get Tom to drill out the broken off rung because I don't trust myself with a drill (they look so easy! They're not).

Here is a detail of the chair. I'm excited to have a real, solid, all-wood chair since other of our chairs are more modern, '60s, and have screws and upholstery and lots of staples. I saw this same style in a rocking chair at the antique store for big bucks. Cost for us? Whatever sand paper goes for and one or two little paint sample pots, half-off at True Value.

This is another chair Tom and I bought awhile ago for 5 bucks! Turns out it's a Thonet, the kind you see a lot if you look at design sites and magazines as much as I do. The original pleather was dinged up, fades and stained and the wood took a bit of a beating too.

In the background of this picture you can see the grey pleather I've since recovered it with (less than a buck at Econo Sales!) And you can see our saddest chair project of all - more of that to come, I should think. You can also see a bunch of other stuff, but ignore that.

I've still got the wood to refinish. Since there are dings I can't repair I'm thinking of staining it a color called "driftwood" to compliment the grey but also to give it an even more casual appeal that embraces minor damage. Smart, huh?

By the way, if you're sensing a grey theme (and I spell grey with an "e") it's because grey is a great color, my favorite color.

Here is footage of an joyfully abandoned project:

The "fracking tuffet" I complained about so copiously on Facebook.

This is a before shot, as in, before I almost shot someone out of frustration. Lane, who I was attempting to recover it for, allowed me to bin it and save the $4 fabric I'd bought for something that was less worthless and falling apart.
We've decided to build our own tuffet out of materials that are possible to nail into, staple into and don't split in two when the wind blows.

I believe in building upon a good foundation.