My Winter of Hibernation: Restoring Antique Chairs

Sunset in the Windows

Our landlady had a whole bunch of antique chairs in sad shape.  I agreed to bring them back to life in exchange for part of the rent!  I knew how to refinish the wood since my dad forced me to help him refinish chairs when I was younger (hated it then, love it now. typical).   But during the winter I also learned some sweet new seat-weaving skills.  

I'll just go ahead and admit that this makes me a whole new brand of geek.  

Whatever I don't care.  Because seat-weaving is really, really satisfying!  Here's the basic process for each caned chair that needed a complete makeover: 

I did a few of them, most of which were in a sad state at the beginning.  (Marc did all the paint-stripping for me, because he is the nicest man.)  You can see on the bottom left that I ran out of caning pegs and started using chopsticks.  Making do.

The cool thing was that most people who saw these chairs in their original state (myself included), thought, wow, these need to go to the dump.  there is no saving these chairs.  They were so sickly.  And so wobbly they seemed about to fall apart.  But they are beautiful now, ready for another solid two hundred years.

Two Cane Chairs - Right, finished; Left, in Progress

Other chairs, that have a groove around the seat instead of holes, require sheet cane, which you buy pre-woven and then install.  It's way faster than hand-caning, but really annoying!

Sheet Cane Installation in Progress

With some other chairs the wood was fine and I just wove new seats.  This one was an old shaker rocker that had the wrong kind of seat:

Blue Rocker Before - With Dilapidated Old Cane Seat

Blue Rocker After - With Shaker Tape

And here's two antique fiber rush rockers... the one on the right is really old:

Fiber Rush Rockers Before

Fiber Rush Weaving

Fiber rush makes a really sturdy, pretty seat, but my hands were always covered in blisters after a few hours of weaving!

After weaving, you can stain the rush to match the chair.

Fiber Rush Rockers After

After a winter of this, I am completely converted.  Learn new hobbies and pay the rent?  I'll take it!

I plan to scour second-hand shops from now until I die, in search of dilapidated old chairs to bring back to life.  So if you ever see any, grab 'em for me!