My First Chair Refinish

Featured at Saturday is Crafty Day #60 @ Along for the Ride

This chair has been mentioned in my exploding eggs post.  Which was actually my first post ever.  And more recently here.  Well it's finally done!  After 2 1/2 years of sitting in my garage, bouncing back and forth between my house and my mom's, and causing a little mayhem, this chair can be marked as a completed project.

First I have to say anything I know about refinishing furniture I learned from my mom.  She showed me how to recover the seat, talked to me about pretreating the wood, and the best way to apply stain.  She's amazing.  What's even more amazing is she is self-taught in all of these things, and much of her learning happened before the wonderful world of the internet.  She's somewhat of a Jill of all trades, and she taught herself most of those trades before google searches and youtube invaded our homes.

One day I went over her house to borrow her staple gun and hear her tips on how to recover the seat.  I was excited with how simple of a process it was for this chair.  I should have known better, and realized that this feeling of ease was misplaced.  When I got back home and placed the seat on the chair I realized something.  We had recovered the wrong chair base.  The one we did was too big!  I don't know if you can tell by the picture, but look for the space between the chair and the seat.  It should be nestled in the sides, not sitting on top like that.  :)

I had to apply the polyurethane in one of my bathrooms.  The garage was too cold!

Well, I got the correct chair base recovered and set about staining the chair.  I would highly suggest pretreating the wood.  It does help!  I mixed a walnut and golden pecan stain to get the color I wanted.  I'm happy to say I love the color the wood turned out.  If you've never stained wood before, I suggest giving it a try.  It so beautiful to watch how the stain accents the wood grains as you apply it and wipe it off.  There is truly something gratifying about the process.  I was even a good girl and waiting the appropriate amount of time between coats and the polyurethane.  I'm not very patient, so this was a big accomplishment for me!

This chair will find a new home in my sewing room  I'm so excited to use it!