| Blog series by lightweightladylefty | updated 11-11-2019 09:59 PM | 5 parts | 1804 reads | 4 comments total |
Part 1: I may have bit off more than I can chew
Disclaimer: Please be aware that just because I have documented this journey does not mean that I have a clue about what I’m doing. Note: The chair is now finished but I decided to document my journey in a blog rather than posting all these photos with the final project. [I tried to put sections together in a way that would be understandable and not necessarily in the order in which I tackled the project.] When I was a kid, I remember napping in this Morris chair at my grandpar...
Part 2: The frame
The wooden frame was much worse than I had realized. Boards had been nailed to the bottom to keep the springs from falling through. The burlap was recycled from a Burlington, Wisconsin Murphy Products feed sack which still had a portion of the label attached to it. You can also see that a rough piece of lath across the front inside had been screwed to the front legs to hold the legs together. Initially, I thought I could simply take the four main chair sections apart. I redrilled the ho...
Part 3: The back cushion
I removed the mid-20th-century gray marble vinyl to reveal more of the chair’s history. The top cushion’s original upholstery which was under the gray marble vinyl appeared to be an early attempt at Naugahyde – almost like a painted coating on the fabric. The back cushion’s springs were in good shape. The original straw and cotton was in pretty good shape, too, but I decided not to recycle any of it. So I retied the springs and reinforced the back with two strips of wood . . . ...
Part 4: The seat cushion
The seat cushion was really delightful. A couple of separate foam cushions had been added to the chair to make it usable when I was a child, but this is how it looked now. It’s hard to imagine anyone could sit on this with the padding nearly disintegrated and untied springs protruding! After detaching the legs and removing the original upholstery, this is what remained. In the front the undulated wire which held the springs was badly bent; in the back it was completely broken. N...
Part 5: Assembly: I might be considered square, but this chair certainly wasn’t.
Absolutely nothing was even close to square. The left side of the front rail was ¼” taller than the right side. The legs (front and back) were not square to the frame. You can see that the cushion frame is crooked as it attaches to the wooden framework. The back horizontal piece was too twisted to retain so I replaced that part. The arms, spindles, and carved parts of the chair were oak, but the remainder is a conglomeration of other woods, although mostly maple. The seat por...
