The Chair

Two years ago, a friend gave us this chair. The Big Guy wasn't sure about keeping it, but since it had good bones, I planned to refurbish it. That plan took a little longer than I'd anticipated. For a year, it stayed just like this.

Then, last summer, I removed the canvas, taking pictures as I did so I would know how to reassemble it.

Teensie liked the old canvas.

Zuzu didn't care about the chair. She thought we should be playing ball.

I spray-painted the bones. It took a lot of spraying, flipping, drying, flipping, and spraying.

My palette came from these chair cushions. Let me back up a bit. These two chairs and little table are your drug-store variety white plastic chairs. The glass table was also originally white. They were bought by my dad while on a visit here when we needed places to sit outside and found ourselves without. They stayed white for a long time, but then one day I found these cushions on clearance, and after I'd tossed them in my cart, I wheeled over to the paint section and got coordinating spray paint. I love that there are spray paints for every imaginable thing you could want to paint. Isn't it nice that I've used my adoration of spray paint for good and not graffiti?

Now, back to the present. Or, well, a year ago still.

After I'd painted the wood, I headed to Walmart to see if I could find some suitable canvas-type material. I found exactly one. And it was blue! And it only cost me $5.96 for twice as much as I needed. We'll get back to that in a minute.

That was as far as I got last year. The green bones sat folded on the deck like a sad grasshopper, the blue duck cloth sat neatly folded on the mud room shelf, mocking me each time I did laundry.

But it was on my list of projects to complete this summer, and today was the day.

I'm not a sewer (though you might consider me a drain yuk-yuk-yuk) and I'm definitely not a sewist. My best friend is a sewer, for cryin' out loud! In fact, this is her old sewing machine that lives at my house so her newer, fancier machine doesn't upset it. Mostly it sits quietly under my craft table, but today it got lifted out and dusted off and put to work. Every time I use it, since those times are widely spaced (and I'm not a sewer), I have to consult the manual to be sure I'm doing everything right. I was smart enough, at least, to buy heavy-duty needles when I bought the duck cloth. Now you know why I bought double the cloth I needed. I anticipated mistakes.

 Zuzu helped this time, too.

 I had saved the old canvas to use as templates. Look at my nice, straight line! And my back-stitching! It was going a lot more smoothly than I'd thought. I wasn't sure I would like the contrasting stitching, but I didn't have super-strength blue thread, and even though it was off-white, it looked like it was the same green as the chair once it was on.

The Big Guy brought out the pneumatic staple gun for me.

Otter supervised.

Not too shabby for a non-sewer!

Now where's my Kindle?