Chair Reconstruction

Today I painted for a few hours, between other work on my day job, but nothing came of it. I had to paint over every bit of it. It was fun anyway.

But I also tackled another project that had better results. Youngest loves to work with me when we take things apart, and today was different than the usual appliance or plumbing job. Today it was Dearest's chair at our kitchen table. Virtually every joint was loose except the back. So we removed the seat (four screws) and then I gently tapped the frame into pieces. The first photo shows them all apart, and the first three back together with glue and home-made clamping.

Here is the clamp concept up close. Now before Alex can protest that he has every clamp type known to man, and a few more besides, in his basement workshop, and all I needed to do was walk next door to borrow the right tool for the job, I have to confess something. I positively delight in cooking up my own methods, tools, and processes when I make or repair things. I adore jury rigging. I once rebuilt a car muffler with steel Hi-C cans, tomato sauce cans, and coat hangers. It lasted over a year. I have a PC I rebuilt where the mother board was not a correct fit, and I handled the adjustment with a lego, which was the perfect height, had pegs in the right place to prevent movement, and was non-conductive (plastic). So using gardening wire and twisting it, using kid's building blocks on each side, until the glue began to seep back out of the joints, suited my love of primitive tools based on simple principles. You can also see in this photo Youngest's idea to label the four corner braces before we took them off. That was smart.

When we completed the three courses of gluing, the chair didn't so much as creak. Much better than the wobbly thing we started with. All the chairs around our table are mismatched - I've recovered the seats (all different) several times, cutting new foam for them, as well. Oldest and Youngest actually share an old piano bench I began to refinish (all the old finish is off... I've just taken a 20 year pause). Oldest started using it at the table many years ago, and he hates to change things, so when we needed to add another person to the table (Youngest) we just added doubled occupancy of the bench rather than replace the bench with two chairs.

I also like to reweb lawn chairs. I've even darned a few socks in my day (a favorite pair of argyles - back in the very early 80's - I haven't worn argyles in over twenty years). I like to make something good last longer.