A First Coat of Stain for the Chairs

Before we depart for a week in Florida, I got the first coat of stain onto both chair frames. It stank, it dyed my arms brown where is splashed and luckily it looks great.

And now we know: wear long sleeves when staining

Sewing the Chair Covers

As I caught a cold/flu/sore throat bug, the wood shop was not the place for me this week and I didn’t really have the energy anyways. I’ve been working on the covers for the chair cushions; there will be 4 in total @ 24” square by 4” deep. The fabric I got is a textured neutral that feels really soft and the piping will be a charcoal grey. A few weeks ago the cat helped me cut out the fabric, very helpful of her I might add.

I started by sewing all the piping, 8 strips of 8ft each, 2 for each cushion. Then came sewing the piping to the 24” square pieces and sewing a 4” band between each set of square. Once complete I headed to my mum’s and serged the inside of each cushion cover. The edges of the fabric were shedding so much that the cat was eating the strips and even pinking shears wouldn’t do the trick.

All 4 covers are now complete and ready to be put on the foam cushions and had sewn in place. Unfortunately I have only bought 2 of the foam inserts and ran out of batting to wrap them in so the actual assembly will have to wait till after the Christmas season.

And now we know: the cat really like to eat the strings that fray off the edge of the fabric…wonder how bad that is for her?

Sanding the Pair of Chairs

Since the frames are complete, my least favourite step (and my husband’s least favourite) was next. With my new orbital sander, downdraft table and dust collector all running, I got to work sanding the chairs down. A few very dusty hours later they are nice and smooth and ready for stain.

And now we know: I still think the downdraft table is not quite right; maybe even less holes or a tighter seal where the hose comes in? There is less dust but still loses suction as you work.

Assembling the Chairs

The chairs are progressing well and are now mostly assembled. It was slow going as I only have 1 corner clamp so I would glue and clamp 2 pieces, wait an hour, add the screws, then repeat with the next 2 pieces. Despite that, all went very smoothly until I started attaching the arm support on the 2^nd chair. I’d run out of my standard type of 2 ½” screws and found a box a friend had left at my house. After pre-drilling the holes, I started inserting the 2 screws. At about 2/3 of the way in both of the heads just snapped clean off. Had there not still been a gap between the 2 pieces of wood, it would have been fine to leave them in place but unfortunately I had to remove them somehow.

I tried hammering the wood together, using an extractor bit to remove them and adding more screws to pull the pieces together but nothing worked. Finally after a few days of contemplation and frustration, I borrowed my dad’s reciprocating saw and just cut right through the screws at the point between the 2 pieces of wood. I re-glued the pieces together, added a couple of screws (NOT from my friend’s box) and it looked good as new.

Also complete are the inner frames for the seat and back of both chairs. Webbing will be attached to these, and then they will be screwed in place from the inside so the frame remains without any visible connectors.

And now we know: there are different quality levels of screws and the cheap ones are really terrible