Giving new life to old dining chairs

Now I know I said that I wasn't going to try to catch up. But some projects I've tackled over the last 6 years I'm actually pretty proud of, and I did a reasonably good job documenting. So, I'm going to break my own rule... already. 

Back in graduate school, before I even started Mess of the Day, I went to goodwill looking for a desk chair and found an old fashioned dining chair. Back then, on a tight budget and with limited tools, I bought some high loft batting on sale and Joanns, a scrap of old fleece and a half yard of cheap home decorator fabric to recover the worn out seat, wiped it down with Old English, and used it as my desk chair for many years. But, my butt is less tolerant of sitting on unpadded wood these days, and I finally gave up and bought a high quality desk chair. When I finally retired it as my desk chair, though, I held onto it, always thinking that some day I would find a couple more of its cousins--- similar dining chairs of that era--- to reupholster into a matching set of dining chairs.

In 2020, as my husband and I set up house together, we had a glut of furniture, but none of it matched. We used my dining table, but his dining chairs, and they looked awful together but were the best we could do with what we had. So, my dining chair project got fast tracked a bit and the search began for some 1930s style dining chairs to cobble together a set. While these chairs seemed like they were everywhere 10 years ago, they proved to be difficult to find. I picked up these two lyre back chairs on craigslist, but when I got them home realized that they were sized for delicate little 1930s bodies, and at 12” across weren’t going to the ticket for everyday dining. 

So, the hunt continued until I stumbled across someone selling their set of 6 matching chairs as a “project” for $30. While, it wasn’t the eclectic mismatched set I’d envisioned, the price was right and I needed a project. With his help, I piled all 6 chairs in my Mary Poppins purse of a Honda Fit (RIP Brave Little Echo) and the fun began.

The wood was in decent shape, but the finish showed years and years of love and use, and perhaps a few of storage in a bay area garage. I started by taking the seats off and giving them a good wash with warm water and dish soap. Slime and grime from the ages came off, turning my sponge and water bucket black, the grease bloomed white as I washed, making the project into what seemed like a never ending one. Unfortunately, along with the kitchen grime and oils from 80 years of handling, came some of the original finish and stain.

Now, I know that the right way to do this would be to sand the chairs down to bare wood and start over with the finish. But honestly, I didn’t need a project that big. So, I bought a pint can of General Finished Gel Stain in Brown Mahogany ($35) and decided to give the Pinterest favorite for easy refinishing a chance. I wiped on a liberal layer of gel stain, then wiped softly to leave as much of the color as I could without leaving streaks or letting it look gloppy like paint. In places where the stain was still in good shape I wiped with a heavier hand, just trying to imbue the color a bit and hide the original honey tones of the finish with something a bit darker. I don’t normally wear plastic gloves for projects like this, but with my honeymoon coming up, I bit the bullet and bought a box of cheap gloves. Let me tell you, they were worth it! Gel stain is a mess, and the small splatters that did get on me lasted for weeks of scrubbing in the shower. Buy the gloves.

Over the course of a couple warm late summer days of 2022 I gave each chair three thin coats of gel stain and let them dry for two days. Next, again with a soft rag (read: piece of cotton old t-shirt) I wiped on three coats of Satin Finish Wipe on Polyurethane, letting them dry in between and wound up with a finish that will hopefully last a while (if not 80 years like the original!)

Next, I took the to seats. I ordered a box of six 2” high density seat foam pads online from Joanns with a 50% off coupon and visited the sale section of the store to find a cheap upholstery fabric that I could make work. I expected to spend about $5 a yard on the fabric, but the guy behind the counter let me use a coupon on that too (not sure he was supposed to, but hey…) and I ended up spending about $10 in total for the 2.5 yards of sturdy fabric. I will note that 1” foam probably would have done the trick. The 2” pads give sort of princess-and-the-pea vibes, but it sure is comfortable.

I’m pretty sure the upholstery was original, judging by the sheer quantity of staples I had to take out of it one by one. Removing the old, decaying fabric and foam was by the far the worst and most labor intensive part of this project. Each one took nearly an hour with a pair of need nosed pliers, a flat head screw driver, and a staple remover.

Once I was down to bare wood, I traced the shape of the seat on the foam with a sharpie and cut each pad to fit with an old serrated steak knife. The seats turned out to be just a bit too big, so I did a little cobbling of scraps that I cut off of the sides to fill in a void in the back. The result wasn’t perfect, but once it was covered with high loft batting you wouldn’t know the difference.

First, I stapled on the batting snugly, then, trimmed the excess and wrapped the fabric around to staple it in place. This was, admittedly, much more difficult that the lady in this video made it look, especially with an old staple gun that jams and clogs every few staples. But, did my best. I had planned to add a dust cover, to make the job look professional, but honestly, I’m not sure that my stapler would have survived it. So, I just trimmed the fabric as best I could and went to put the seats back on. To my surprise, after adding new fabric and batting some of them didn’t want to go back into their slots. Some set right in, but I had to some creative maneuvering including getting the seat in place and literally jumping up and down on it to secure a few of them in place (sorry next person to try to reupholster them…) The final, and perhaps unnecessary step, was buying some shiny new phillips head screws to affix the seats in place, replacing a hodge-podge of different size and length screws I pulled out when I disassembled them. But now they match and will be easier to repair, assuming the seats can be removed someday without the jaws of life.

All in all, I’m very pleased with how they turned out for what added up to about $100 worth of materials (including the chairs). These chairs are sturdy enough to have survived for nearly a century of life already, and I’m so excited to see them have a second life with us.