Mid-Century Modern Desk Chair

Part of my planning for moving to our apartment, is having a furniture plan. I've been thinking through what furniture we are taking and what furniture we are changing and what furniture we are saving or getting rid of.

Since we basically will only have two rooms(living/kitchen and a bedroom), our office will be a corner in the living room. I'm kinda looking forward to this for two reasons.

1. When Matt is on the internet, he won't disappear into the back of the house.

2. It will finally motivate me to organize our desk and office supplies and keep them that way because I'll have to look at them all the time.

Our current desk is embarrassing to show you. Matt bought it in college for the large table top area. My main problem with it is that it has NO storage! No drawers! No NOTHING! Matt added some shelves himself, but they don't function very well. It almost goes without saying...THE DESK ISN'T COMING WITH US!!!! It's huge! We do not have that luxury of space to spend on an office area. And it's ugly! And completely non-functional for our needs.

















I have cute white desk from my childhood that we will be using. It doesn't have as much space on top, but Matt doesn't use the desktop except as a place to collect junk and papers. If he needs space to spread out something like our houseplans, we have the kitchen counter AND the kitchen table.

Now on to the chair issue...

Matt was fine with the idea of using a different desk. And in MY head it was obvious that if we are getting rid of the giant ugly desk, we are also getting rid of the giant ugly chair. This was not so obvious to Matt. How could he think I was going to put this chair with my cute white desk?
























That was not going to happen. That would mean from every area of the room, whether it be the kitchen, the dining area, or the couch, you would see this:
























I envisioned something more like this:








































Except not $400 from Pottery Barn. Maybe more like $50 from a flea market or Craigslist.

So, I started searching Craigslist to see what was out there and to check out the prices. Found a few wooden options, but then I came across this ad.

















And the aluminum one caught my eye. I sent it to Matt at work and his response was "It's freakin' sweet. I want it!" I've never actually heard him use the phase "sweet", but it was no surprise that he would love it being a metal worker himself. So I called the consignment shop where it was and made plans to go see it the next day.

I also browsed around the internet and ebay doing a little research on this baby. I saw many others in great condition listed from $150-$400. It's made by Goodform(you can google "goodform aluminum chair" and check out images...if you want). They make a dining chair version which is called the "navy chair" because it was made for naval ships because of it's lightweight and durability.
























You might recognize this chair. I know I did. The originals, along with lots of remakes, are gaining popularity and making lots of appearances in decor magazines lately. I've seen them countless times in magazines you wouldn't think would have a chair like this, such as Better Homes and Gardens and Country Living. They are usually paired with a rustic farmhouse table. It's all about blending styles together.
























Hard to see them, but they're there. I couldn't find any better pictures right now. Here's one with different industrial chairs(can be purchase from pottery barn or sundance).
























Ahhh. I just love that dining room.

Ok, let's get back on subject. We bought the chair and I set out to buying supplies to recover the seat.

1. one yard of vinyl from Mary Jo's Cloth Store in Gastonia(a yard was way too much by the way) $8
2. one yard of 1/4 in' foam to add some padding to the metal seat $3
3. spray adhesive(I used Super 77) $5
4. aluminum polish(from a car parts store) $6

And there are leftovers of everything but foam for another project.

Close-up of chair before:






































































Because the seat is "butt-shaped", I couldn't cover it the way I usually do. And I couldn't use staples like you normally would attach new fabric. I decided to use spray adhesive so that you could still see the butt shape, rather than having the fabric stretched tightly over the top. I added the foam to give it a little padding, since there was none.

I'll try and talk you through it, but I did a really bad job of documenting my work.

First, I flipped the chair upside down and unscrewed the nuts that held on the seat. I used needle-nose pliers to get into the hard to reach places. Once the seat came off, I needed to clean the chair. Under the seat had a lot of red/orange dust collected, which I can only assume was rust or decomposing adhesive and dirt, or a combo of all three. I used the vacuum attachment to clean all this up. It was a lot. Especially under the seat liner that immediately crumbled when I touched it. I ripped it off to expose the metal underneath to make sure it was all clean.

I polished the frame using the aluminum polish and a rag. It didn't make a big difference. It basically just cleaned the metal a little. It's not really any shinier and all the scratches are still very apparent.

















I took the seat outside and sprayed it with adhesive. The directions say to wait at least 30 sec for it to get sticky. Then I laid the foam on top and smoothed it out. Once moved back inside, I trimmed the foam to fit around the seat.

































Next, it was time to spray the vinyl and attach it to the seat. Because the seat is concave, getting it wrinkle free was impossible without heating up and stretching out the vinyl, so I just did my best to spread out the wrinkles(shown in the after photo below).

Then I trimmed it and sprayed the edges with glue. Folding the sticky corners was also tricky and they don't match each other perfectly. Once it was attached, I placed it back on the chair, flipped the chair over again, and reattached the brackets that hold it on(sorry, no pictures).

I did make one mistake with my trimming. I didn't leave a flap to fold over to hide the foam. There is a raw edge where the seat meets the arm of the chair. It will probably always bother me, but I think once it's in the room and being use, no one will notice it(shown in the photo below).

Over all, I'm very pleased with how it came out.
























Close-up of a corner

















Close-up of wrinkles

















Close-up of my cutting mistake

















Total money spent: $72 (with leftover supplies, so you almost can't count some of that)

Once Matt fixes the hydraulic thingamajiger on his old chair, we will sell it on Craigslist, so that will help with the cost even more. It won't pay for the whole thing but that's ok.

I stole this dresser.

Sorry it's been so long since my last post. We had a family emergency. My father-in-law had a motorcycle wreck and has been in the hospital with a brain injury for the past 3 weeks. He's doing much better now and is moving to a rehab facility very soon. You can follow his progress here: www.carepages.com/carepages/mikekelly . Maybe you'll get to see some progress on our house again soon.

So, backing up in time here, do you remember the antique vanity bench? My mom, aunts and I go to the Roxboro, NC flea market every year after Thanksgiving. Well that same day, in that same place, I found a little dresser that had so much potential I couldn't pass it up. It was painted this awful yellow color with primary colored knobs(blue, red, and green).




















It actually hurt my eyes.

I'm not kidding.











































The silhouette of the piece looked old, so I walked over for closer inspection. Firstly, I saw the price: $25 Yes, sir! Then, I took the drawers out and inspected the wood and the back panel, and the drawer construction. This baby looked really old. I could also tell from a place where the paint was chipped, that this was oak. Oak(especially stained oak) is easy to recognize. Those little vertical marks are called rays. Pine does not have these.

This is oak. Notice the grain pattern with "little marks".
























This is pine. We'll call this grain "big swirlies".



















I was very excited about my find. An antique oak dresser for $25! Wrap it up!

Wait, not so fast.
We have to haggle.
"Can you do any better on the price since I'm buying two pieces?" (remember the vanity bench)
"I'll have to go ask."

I think the bench was $17, and the dresser was $25, so that's $42 total. The man came back with a slightly lower price. In my head I'm thinking "I'd really like to get them both for $30." It's hard to remember the details since it was last November. Somehow he came back with $12 for the bench and $16 for the dresser.

Seriously?

$16 for the dresser??

I almost feel like I'm stealing it.

Yes, please. This is why I drive an SUV. You just never know what you'll find and where you'll find it.

I had to wait until this summer to work on refinishing it, since paint stripper is an "outside toy". My plan was to strip the paint off, refinish the wood, and add new drawer pulls.

I use Jasco paint stripper and have been pretty happy with it. Just make sure you wear gloves because it will eat your skin if it gets on you. Use a cheap brush that you won't mind throwing away afterward. Don't use those foam spongy brushes. The foam with be eaten by the Jasco. This stuff has to go on really thick to do the job right. Then it sits for 15 min and does whatever it does to the paint to make it bubble up. I lay all my pieces out and do the top surface of each one. By the time I'm done brushing it on the last piece, the first piece is probably ready to be scraped.

This is what it looks like when it's ready to scrape.



















A drawer after one round of scraping. Did I mention it takes more than one? Look! There's a sticker of a baby duck! I found six different stickers. This must have been a child's dresser at some point. Jasco takes care of them too.




















When the paint and stain started coming off, I noticed that the grain was looking different. On closer inspection I realized that this wood was NOT in fact oak. It is pine! At first I panicked because I thought the drawers might be a different kind of wood than the rest of the dresser and that would NOT work.




















It didn't take me long to figure out that the wood grain I had seen in the store was coming OFF with the Jasco. It was a fake oak finish applied on top of pine. What the what! That sounds really cheesy, but I guess oak was too expensive back in the day. But I'm surprised they went to the trouble, or even had the technology, to imitate oak grain.

I was really bummed at first, but after I sanded the drawers I saw how amazing the pine looked with all the old character in the wood.

This is the side of the dresser after one round of jasco and scraping. The second coat is getting to work.



















Don't underestimate the amount of work that is involved. The sander will take care of some of this. The goal is not perfection.



















Scraping is done. But that was the easy part. Sanding is next. Make sure you have a mouse sander, which has a point on the end perfect for getting in those crevices. I always use the coarsest grit, which is 60 grit, to get off old finish. It has the largest pieces of sand on the paper and will save you time because it takes wood faster with less effort.



















The drawers were my friends. They were the easiest to sand and came out beautiful without a lot of elbow grease.
























I like to do all the easy to reach, flat areas first. Then go back and focus on the difficult parts.




















After getting the paint and old finish off the top, I was able to see a huge mildew stain that went along the front two boards(the left side in this pic). I worked for an hour to sand it off. I don't have a picture of it before. After I did the best I thought I could do, I dampened it with a rag to see what it would look like with an oil finish. The mildew stains popped up all over the place. I still had a lot of work left to do. I just can't leave it like this. At some point, water got trapped under the paint and the wood couldn't dry out, so the whole top had mildew damage. There's nothing else you can do but paint over it, or sand it off. The goal is not perfection.
























Now I'm using a razor to removed paint that the sander couldn't reach.



















For some reason the sander wasn't doing a good job at removing the old color from the recessed panels. I had to do the old fashion way. It actually worked a lot better.



















After sanding the old color off, don't forget to switch to 120 grit sandpaper. This won't take long, but it will make the wood much smoother. Use your power sander.

The wood still won't be completely smooth. You have to step down to finer and finer grit to get the smoothest finish. Since all the old color is gone, this step only takes about 5 min. I used 220 grit but didn't think it was smooth enough, so I did 320 last. You could probably skip the 220 grit paper.

The look I was going for was very natural. I didn't want to stain it dark, but wanted to let the natural color show. So I chose tung oil since I was very happy with how it turned out on my coffee table I refinished years ago. It is like stain in that it gets absorbed into the pores of the wood. But unlike stain, it does not require a polyurethane top coat to protect it. So that saves time, but that's not why I did it. I didn't want a glossy finish, and tung oil has a more rustic finish to it.



















This was my test spot.




















Tung oil on:



















The back panel of the dresser was extremely stubborn. It was also warped, making it impossible to sand. So I figured, why bother, no one will ever see it. And it could be neat to look back on the history of the furniture and see all the colors it used to be. If it bothers me later, I can just paint it off white, like I did the inside of the drawers. Remember, the goal is NOT perfection.



















I wasn't sure what kind of finish would look best on the drawer pulls, so I bought 6 different ones at Lowes to take home and try.

Vintage Brass: No



















Aged Nickel: No



















Oil Rubbed Old World Bronze: Ooo, Ooo, Yes!



















Color was not the only consideration when choosing pulls. Shape is equally important. First, I thought I wanted a hanging swan neck pull(aka old fashioned flappy, hangy downy kind) in cast iron or oil rubbed bronze. But the top of this dresser hangs over about 3 or 4 inches, leaving plenty of room for a drawer pull to stick out. The hangy downy kind is typically used on dressers that don't have an over hang because they don't want the pulls to jut out and get in the way.

Also, this dresser has a very boxy look to it, so a curvy feminine drawer pull would just not match the personality of the dresser. The last pull pictured here fit the bill perfectly. It's boxy, rustic, and dark. The only problem....they were $4.50 each. The most expensive one. I searched and search online for a comparable option or a vendor who was selling it cheaper. No luck. These are one of a kind. And Lowes was half the price of the manufacturer's price online! It had to be these. Drawer pulls can really make or break the look of a piece of furniture. They are like accessories to an outfit. They can make it or break it. Girls, you understand.

So yes, I bit the bullet and got them. They look spectacular.
















































































I painted the inside of the drawers Antique White in a semi-gloss finish. It was paint I already owned. You could really paint it any color you want. It would be a neat surprise to open it up and see a pop of color. You can see the original locks on the backside of the drawer front. I love that feature.



















Here is the cost break down:

Dresser: $16
Jasco: $10
Tung Oil: $8 (plenty left for another project)
Power sander: already had
Sandpaper for power sander: $5
Finishing sandpaper: already had
Scraper: already had
Razor: already had
Paint: already had
Drawer pulls: $30

Total: $69

Ok, so that's not a total steal by my standards, but it's still pretty cheap considering what you get: solid, antique pine.

Craft Room and a Sneak Peek

Remember this chair?















I finally found a buyer. So, here is a sneak peek of it in my "craft room". I think there are about 4 different projects going on at once.














Sigh.....what am I going to do without this extra space? I have been super spoiled by 2 living rooms and 3 bedrooms. 1600 sq ft cut down to 800 sq ft. That's not really the direction you're supposed to go in, are you? At least it will be mine.

Stay tuned for the big reveal, coming soon.

I got a fever, and the only prescription is more cowbell...I mean CHAIRS!

I know I said the last orange chair was a keeper, but I may have found a new love. I'm a sucker for old wood finishes. Up close you can see the beauty of this antique wood and you'll never guess where I found it!! GOODWILL! Yes, I know it doesn't have a seat, but that's the fun part because I wouldn't have kept the seat that was on there anyway.



















I imagine some old repurposed piece of fabric, like this quilt, but not so much white. That's just to give an idea of how you need to keep with the original style of the chair and find a fabric that looks as old as the finish. A search for the perfect fabric could take a while. I hope it will be one of those "know it when you see it" moments.