Hey Bernice!

My husband and I were driving home after a lazy Sunday breakfast when he was hit with ‘Stop, reverse the car!’.

I had spotted 2 potential outdoor chairs (which we needed to complete our new deck). These chairs were sitting on the footpath (hard rubbish for anyone interested), about 30m down a side street we were driving past at 60km an hour…. I have a finely tuned sense of judgement when it comes to assessing junk placed on the footpath. I can usually determined at any speed if it is worth stopping and going back… and these were worth going back for!

They were not in very good condition, weather damaged, stain/varnish wearing off, screws falling out – but the potential was there, I could see it (lucky for me, so could my husband… because I was about to ask him to open the boot of his car so we could squeeze them in the back to take home).

Because of their size we had to make two trips (cleverly hiding the second one out of sight incase it was taken by someone whilst we were gone – you can imagine my devastation if that was to happen – they’d be tears!).

I was thrilled, I had two chairs with lots of potential, with no monetary outlay required (yet!). I just had a little work to do to make them look beautiful.

So, I started sanding with the electric hand sander. This was fairly straight forward until I hit the turned pieces of wood supporting the arms, and the front legs – they were a little more challenging.

As you can see they came up really well sanded.

I then gave them both a good scrub down with a wood cleaner – this removes any wood mould and grey colour on the arms (from the weather).

I had to inject a little bit of liquid nails into some of the joints – to stop the wobbles. Now they were ready to be ‘dressed’.

Choosing a colour to finish the chairs was challenging. Did I want to paint them white, the same colour as the house (eggshell), or allow the natural colour of the wood and grain show through.

I decided to stain them with an external deck stain called charcoal, which will allow the natural wood to be seen underneath – it will also go really well with the black and white fat striped cushions I have already picked out for the chairs.

I did 2 coats of the stain, to give the chairs more than just a rumor of the charcoal colour (don’t you just love that word ‘rumor’ – my husband used it the other day when describing how to best make garlic pizza ‘it requires more than just a rumor of garlic’ is how he best described it).

I can’t describe the satisfaction I get from transforming something… if you don’t mind putting in a little elbow grease, it is truly rewarding to restore something yourself …

Anyone want to join me for a G & T whilst lounging on the deck in my new chairs?

Bernice
http://www.heybernice.com