Wednesday, October 2, 2013

A Tale of Two Chairs

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. 
And working to revamp this pair of decrepit $5 chairs embodies the worst of times.
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This post is dedicated to all of those blog readers who wonder, "How does so-and-so make her blog projects look so easy?" I'm lifting the veil today and revealing that DIY projects don't always go as planned...at least not for me.

This is the tale of two bamboo chairs.

Things started with such promise. I instagrammed a before photo of these $5 chairs in April...yes, April. That same day, I hacked into the brittle rush seats. I contemplated learning how to weave a rush seat, but it seemed complicated. I checked into cost, but was demoralized to learn that reweaving a rush seat would cost over $100 per chair! Yeah, right.
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Without much of a plan for the replacement seats, I dove headfirst into stripping the chairs. The original finish was chipped and shabby but I didn't want to just cover it with a coat of paint. Visions of beautiful antique wood waiting under decades of paint kept me going.
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Out came the Citristrip, which had worked so successfully on my vintage desk. Ugh...here's where the story takes a serious turn for the worst. I waited and I waited. And then I waited some more.

That paint just wouldn't budge. Worst of all, the chairs' nooks and crannies held on stubbornly to the black paint. I scraped and I scraped and I considered sending these chairs off to their death in our weekly trash pickup.

Fast forward five months: the Citristrip that I couldn't scrape off hardened into a chalky residue. The chairs were down for the count as far as I was concerned.
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But I was looking for a project as the summer ended, so I thought long and hard about following through with my antique chairs. I needed a new way to sand the chairs and my usual sanding block wasn't cutting it. Enter the sanding glove!
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Totally absurd looking, I know, but it worked! Dried Citristrip and paint came off! The paint didn't come off completely, so I repainted the chair frame in a fresh flat black. Crazy, right?

At this point I looked into weaving new seats. This webbed seat tutorial seemed easy enough. I ordered this cream pinstriped webbing from Etsy, bought upholstery tacks, and got to work.
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I cut strips of the webbing in identical lengths and began nailing the strips to the underside of the chair. I must have been in a total haze because I didn't take any process shots of the weaving. Here is one chair, done and done!
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As you saw earlier this week, one of the chairs is now sitting contently in our den.
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(all via Meet Me in Philadelphia)

And with that, all I can do is co-opt Dickens:
It is a far, far better thing I do to save two antique bamboo chairs frame from the brink.

11 comments:

  1. Good gosh you are a patient woman! I would have ditched those things in a heartbeat! Good save!

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  2. You just blew my mind with that sanding glove. I need that for sure! I knew you would come thru - you are the project queen! The chairs look fab and I love the seat - so fun.

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  3. That is one fantastic transformation -the frames were so great to begin with that it would have been a shame not to do something with them.. your choice was perfect!!
    Best
    Karolyn

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  4. I have my own citristrip horrors afoot. Hoping to make it through with the desk I posted about, but there is a little chair that will end up following the path of yours: sanding off the stripper, and re-painting the thing!

    Thanks for sharing!

    Heather
    loveyourspace.blogspot.com

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  5. This is such an amazing make-over! Well done, friend.

    I'm battling some old paint that just will not strip off either on our dining room hutch. I'm going to try sanding it like crazy - the citristrip was put on weeks ago, so it should be nice and dried out now :)

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  6. I would have put it in the trash. Way to see it through, Ashley. Looks fab!

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  7. Thank you for lifting the veil and sharing the backstory. As a DIY blogger myself, I sometimes get so down on myself about my DIY failures because the sneaky,mean voice in my head says “so and so would never have let this DIY project get so far off track..” Well, you just proved that maybe “So and So” wanted to punch her DIY in the face a few times before creatively coming up with a way to salvage and beautifully photograph it. I saw that awesome chair in your reveal post and I remember thinking “that’s so cool, I bet I could never make something like that though” (actually, that was the sneaky mean voice talking).. so, after reading this post, I’m realizing maybe I could! Thanks for sharing the journey!

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  8. Well, all your hard work paid off. And if it makes you feel any better, I too have struggled with dried on Citristrip! I think I ended up using a small chisel to get most of it off, but that sanding glove seems magical. How did I not know about it?

    Lovely chairs, Ashley. Sorry you had to work so hard to get them that way!
    Camille

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  9. Wow they look amazing! What a transformation!!
    x

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