after many years of dating, my friend jac finally got married to her long-time boy.

jac not-so-subtly hinted that she would like a chair from me, so i decided that i would make her one for her wedding present.

i spent a very long time scouring ebay and gumtree for a chair until i finally found something suitable! it would appear that the demand for nice single vintage chairs has gone up, since they were always too expensive or just plain ugly or too new. so it did surprise me that i ended up finding one i really liked, considering what else was out there. i have a few things i look for when i'm after a chair: 1. it has to be less than $40. i don't see much point in buying a chair for $100 only to have to spend lots of time stripping it back and buying upholstery fabric/stain/other embellishments. plus, if i mess it up, i don't feel quite as bad! also, i like the idea of taking something really cheap and turning it into something beautiful. if it's $100 and already a beautiful chair, then it's not really a challenge. which leads into 2. it has to be somehow different - i like things with a bit of quirk. and 3. it has to have enough wood or upholstery to allow me to change it. this one definitely had all 3, and it satisfied point 2 by having an almost completely circular base, two different style legs (front and back) and an oddly shaped round back.

so with all that in mind, i bought this wooden chair covered in hideous thick green paint. unfortunately, however, i got too excited about the prospect of stripping the paint off that i didn't take a "before" photo. very annoyed! so instead, this is how the chair looked after stripping the seat of the horrible green paint (which covered the whole chair but was flecking off in places to reveal thick white paint).



and this is what it looked like after... well, sort of (yes, i wrapped a chair!)



see more photos, including how the chair actually looked, after the jump...

it took ages to strip - i think the paint had covered the chair for a very long time, since it was stubborn and just did not want to come off, even with my industrial strength paint stripper! so it was with great patience that i finally managed to get it all off!

this is it finally stripped:



after stripping, i then had to sand off all the gunk. there was also a layer underneath all that where the wood was dark and greyed, so i got that off too. that also took a very long time - it was quite a fiddly chair to sand! but i also got to try out my new toy - a little hand-held multisander. previous chairs have all been sanded by hand because i was always a bit distrusting of electrical tools... i had visions of disaster like sanding things too much and them falling apart or just generally ruining the wood. but i was persuaded that these ideas were unfounded! and it was a treat - so much quicker than hand sanding, especially on the larger areas. after sanding, i stained the wood with one coat of walnut stain.



i had had this idea for a while of painting/staining a picture onto wood, kind of inspired by this. i didn't want to go too elaborate like that, so instead i decided on a chevron pattern, especially since the chair wasn't for me and chevron is a bit more universal!

unlike the example, instead of staining it, i had the marvellous idea of gold leafing the pattern on. yes... another one of my big ideas, followed by "it can't be that hard". honestly, i really do have to stop saying that! i had never gold leafed before and went out to the art shop in west ryde and found out all about size (gold glue), leaf, brushes and gloves, and all the other particulars of leafing. i had already bought my real gold leaf off ebay (999/1000 gold) and so, i was all ready to go.

it was a good idea to be geometric, but a little hard getting it to all line up on the chair because of the rounded nature of it. but after some time and lots of re-taping, i managed to get it looking right.



my first attempt at leafing on the chair was a bit of a failure, but it was because i had followed the directions on the size bottle to the letter and consequently left the size to dry too long. you see, the thing with leafing is that you have to paint this stuff on, wait til it gets really sticky, then you've got a little while before it dries to place the leaf. i had left the size for 45 minutes as instructed, and the gold didn't stick to it properly - it was all patchy, which thankfully didn't affect the final look at all. with trial and error, i reduced the waiting time to 20 minutes. gold leaf is really hard to use - you have to work with cotton gloves on (otherwise it sticks to your fingers), you can't feel the leaf at all, and you have to be careful with your breathing...one sneeze or a sigh and your gold leaf is fluttering around in the air! the leaf itself it is packed up in folded sheets of wax paper which are also a pain to work with, especially with the gloves on. in the end, i had a good system going - i would paint the size on one part of the design, wait 20 minutes, then work with one glove on for the leaf, one glove off for dealing with the wax paper. i laid all the little sheets on the size then tapped them into the wood grain with a soft brush.

this is a work in progress picture from my phone... see the leaf is hanging off the edges of the pattern? you are supposed to wait until the size dries before brushing it off with a soft brush.



after leafing the whole thing and fixing up the little bits where the leaf hadn't stuck, i painted a clear gloss over the gold. according to the girl in the art shop this is not necessary, but i wanted to make sure that the leaf would stay put for many years. the finishing touch was 3 layers of wax rubbed into the wood. i just love the way that wax warms up the colour of the wood and adds a little bit of a sheen to it.

so, this is the final product:







one other important thing to note is what i found out about the chair while i was restoring it. i was unable to get an exact date, but i think this chair was made in australia between 1900 and 1940. it is stamped on the underside (which i found after removing all the horrible green paint and gunk) with a stamp that reads “a6 european labour only”.



after some research, i found that this kind of stamp was added to furniture made from 1896 until the middle of the 20th century to indicate that it was constructed by white australians, and not asian australians. during that time, there was a lot of anti-asian sentiment, especially around the time of the great depression, as it was thought that asians and other immigrants were taking jobs away from white australians. also, this stamp and the information surrounding it, as well as the colour and grain of the wood, leads me to believe that the wood is australian silky oak.

so there you go. i thought that was pretty cool...

since i was taking the chair to the wedding to leave on the gift table, i thought it might be an idea to wrap it. thankfully, i have a very big roll of wrapping paper, because it took an awful lot of paper and a long time to get it right! it's very hard to wrap a chair, just in case you're ever tempted!





well, there you have it! probably the toughest bit of furniture i have tackled for a while... though the fault is completely my own!

i hope you like it jac (and merv)... but hey i don't mind having it back if you don't! ;)