The Chairs

Shortly after my parents were married in 1982, my dad purchased two chairs through a local ward meeting house auction.  These chairs were in the Relief Society Room of the historic Kolob 2nd Ward Chapel on Main Street in Springville, Utah.  The chapel I grew up attending, and the chapel where Ryan and I had our wedding reception.  (This same beautiful and historical building was sadly destroyed by arson about 2005.)

For whatever reason, my mom didn't really care for these 'ugly' green chairs from the get-to.  They were old, and worn out.  One sat in my dad's closet where his work clothes were in the basement, and the other sat in an adjacent basement room by the washer and dryer (before the home renovation in the 90's) and we'd sit on it as kids to put our snow clothes on, or drop our swim bag on it after practice.

When we moved to Idaho in 1999, those chairs came too.  For a long while, these two chairs sat in the garage as extra seating when we'd feed the crews during roundup, or a large family event.  More recently, they were moved out to the barn, just waiting for me to bring them home.

In January, my garage became their new temporary home, while I hummmed and haaaaaaaawd about how to re-do them.  My dad had given me the stain color and 4 yards of material that was a remnant of the furniture they had redone in the 90's and then another set redone in the last 2 years for their bunk house on the winter range.  (Even this material has a history and quite the story!)  I knew what the finished product needed to look like, but wasn't sure quite how to execute it.

By the end of January, I decided on a whim (I think I was upset about something and just needed a quite place to myself for a moment! LOL!)  to dig in and start pulling tacks out.  So I sat in the garage, in 40* weather, wearing wool socks and slippers and gloves; and with a screwdriver and hammer, pulled out hundreds of tacks, stripping, and in some places, ripped off the deteriorated material so I could get to the bottom of things.

I spent two weeks, here and there, cleaning up the chairs, getting every.last.tack and thread out of every crack and crevice.  It was definitely therapeutic.  And cold!

After sanding down the beautiful legs, I brought them into my kitchen to acclimate to our warm and dry house, so I could stain and lacquer the legs without freezing my legs off.

Then the real fun began!

Did you know that cutting 2-3" of dense foam takes HOURS if cutting with scissors?  Yet, if you use an electric carving knife, it's like cutting hot butter?  Yeah.  Learned that the hard way.  When I made my rocking chair cushions 9 years ago, I used scissors.  Thank you pinterest for the electric knife short cut!  Didn't even waste any time pulling that wonderful beast out and took less than 5 minutes cutting both backs and seats out!

With my sister Stephanie keeping me company late one night, I stapled (bought an awesome plug-in stapler that saved.my.life and likely the life of my other family members!!!), stretched, poked, prodded, and put in place this really fun fabric.  I was able to MATCH the pattern!  YAY!  (totally accident, but who needs to know, right?!)

I am so excited at how beautiful they turned out!  And my midnight-picture-taking skills don't do them justice....

Thanks for the fun opportunity to re-do some historic furniture pieces, dad!