A Tale of Two Chairs

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. 

And working to revamp this pair of decrepit $5 chairs embodies the worst of times.

This post is dedicated to all of those blog readers who wonder, "How does so-and-so make her blog projects look so easy?" I'm lifting the veil today and revealing that DIY projects don't always go as planned...at least not for me.

This is the tale of two bamboo chairs.

Things started with such promise. I instagrammed a before photo of these $5 chairs in April...yes, April. That same day, I hacked into the brittle rush seats. I contemplated learning how to weave a rush seat, but it seemed complicated. I checked into cost, but was demoralized to learn that reweaving a rush seat would cost over $100 per chair! Yeah, right.

Without much of a plan for the replacement seats, I dove headfirst into stripping the chairs. The original finish was chipped and shabby but I didn't want to just cover it with a coat of paint. Visions of beautiful antique wood waiting under decades of paint kept me going.

Out came the Citristrip, which had worked so successfully on my vintage desk. Ugh...here's where the story takes a serious turn for the worst. I waited and I waited. And then I waited some more.

That paint just wouldn't budge. Worst of all, the chairs' nooks and crannies held on stubbornly to the black paint. I scraped and I scraped and I considered sending these chairs off to their death in our weekly trash pickup.

Fast forward five months: the Citristrip that I couldn't scrape off hardened into a chalky residue. The chairs were down for the count as far as I was concerned.

But I was looking for a project as the summer ended, so I thought long and hard about following through with my antique chairs. I needed a new way to sand the chairs and my usual sanding block wasn't cutting it. Enter the sanding glove!

Totally absurd looking, I know, but it worked! Dried Citristrip and paint came off! The paint didn't come off completely, so I repainted the chair frame in a fresh flat black. Crazy, right?

At this point I looked into weaving new seats. This webbed seat tutorial seemed easy enough. I ordered this cream pinstriped webbing from Etsy, bought upholstery tacks, and got to work.

I cut strips of the webbing in identical lengths and began nailing the strips to the underside of the chair. I must have been in a total haze because I didn't take any process shots of the weaving. Here is one chair, done and done!

As you saw earlier this week, one of the chairs is now sitting contently in our den.

(all via Meet Me in Philadelphia)

And with that, all I can do is co-opt Dickens:
It is a far, far better thing I do to save two antique bamboo chairs frame from the brink.