Thrift-shop Chair Upgrade

I found this awesome chair at a thrift store and with a bit of attention and love it has claimed its rightful place as my favorite reading chair.

Here is my old chair. To upgrade it I used:

• sandpaper
• metal brackets
• wood glue
• wood filler
• crazy glue
• tung oil

The first step was to sand off the old, flaking varnish from all of the wooden parts. Photo 1 shows a before picture with photo 2 after sanding - I love how the grain stands out!

I was careful around where the fabric meets the wood because I didn't want to cause any friction burns into the delicate fabric.

After looking over the chair closely while sanding, I found few cracks that needed repairing.

First, I reinforced the legs that had cracks with metal brackets (photo 1).

Any splits that I found I filled with wood glue and allowed to dry. None of them were bad enough that they required clamping or reinforcing with screws - but this is something that you should consider when evaluating a split.

Once the glue was dry I smoothed wood filler into the split, allowed to dry, and then sanded down again. Photo 2 shows the most difficult split after wood filling but before I sanded it smooth. Although it looks like it is in the centre of the wood, it is still only close to the surface.

The original fabric of this chair is the reason that I bought it. I love the colour and the pattern. Although it is faded and worn in a few spots - it is in pretty good shape.

As I had no desire to recover, and no chance of finding the same fabric, there wasn't much that I could do to repair the few splits. I used crazy glue to seal any fraying edges, which I hope will keep it from deteriorating any further.

I beat out as much dirt (and sawdust from my sanding) from the fabric as well.

Tung oil is a natural finish that I used to bring out the grain and protect the wood. Photo 1 shows the difference it makes in bringing out the grain and infusing the wood with colour and life. I played around with the idea of staining the wood before oiling, but on a test with the oil I saw how much richer it made the colour of the wood and I decided that I didn't need a stain.

I applied the tung oil with an old sock, being careful around the fabric joinings.

This was the last step in making the chair ready for reading - a simple upgrade of a thrift-store find that didn't take very long, but likely extended the life of the chair.