Mr. and Mrs. Claus

So I was enjoying some nice relax time away from my day job browsing some resale shops when I stumbled across Mr and Mrs Claus' chairs.  I inspected them closely for wood, wood type and joinery and ah yes, these have some character to them.  They didn't have a price tag on them so I went to the front of the store to ask the price. Hey, I noticed a couple of chairs way in the back but there's no price on them, I asked. She replied do they look like Christmas chairs?  Why yes they do. They are .25 cents a piece. Huh? Yes, everything that is Christmas is .25 cents.  Sold.

Here's a picture of one of them.
Not bad for .25 cents a piece huh ?
Anyway,  Mr. Claus' chair has some joints that were a little loose (wonder why? HOHOHO) and it looked like someone had tried to repair it in the past. So I took the chair apart where the troubled joints were.       

As you can see it's in piece's. Right after I took it apart I had to decide how I was going to save it.

The joint's were all doweled with glue and supported with corner braces. Well knowing I couldn't redowel to the same sized dowels and there wasn't room for larger sized dowels.

I decided to go with a spline joint, it's kind of like a tenon and mortise joint but it's two mortise's and a piece of tenon that fits into both grooves. I hand cut the mortises.

I had stripped the surface with a scrapper.

I did some sanding.

Then it was time for assembly.

Well in between trying to get back to my chairs I had some other challenges like this little piece of nylon.

It is suppose to look like this piece of nylon

I've been busy repairing this

Ya its my garage door opener, so here's a little progress on the chairs

Here I'm finishing the corner braces by putting a clearance hole in them for screws

Here's a close up of a brace installed and then were ready for painting.

Here's a pic of one of the chair's primed

Ahh, now that looks nice. They got three coats of black paint with my

Wagner spray painter, it works great.

So now to get working on the seat. Hmmm what to do?

Well I decided to go with a seat of texture and not wood. I originally was going to do a hardwood seat but my wife suggested a cloth feel and look, so lets see what she comes up with. In the mean time I get to work on the base of the seat.

First I strip down the old seat.

Lucky I can reuse the spike nuts so I popped them out.

I then traced the old seat on to the 1/2 inch plywood that will be the new seat.

Then because I have two chairs I then clamped two pieces of plywood together and drilled the holes for the nuts.

I then brake out one of my favorite power tools.

Say hello to my little friend!

My little friend went through through this stack of one inch wood like butter.

I then took my file and rounded off the top edge.

Here you see the type of foam I used.

I then traced the wood seat but added an inch extra

Next it was foam cutting time

Then I lay out the fabric to be used that my wife carefully selected

Then lay out the foam and wood evenly on the fabric

Now the next step is a little trick I like to used. I staple the fabric to a couple of stretcher bars. I gives a lot of control of strength and even tension

After you have pulled to gain tension you can hold the bar down on its edge and then you can pivot the bar to hold the tension as you staple the fabric into the seat

This is what the top looks like at this point

Next we move on to the sides and do the same process

Now the hard part, the corners. The first thing to do is open the corner to be like an open flower.

Pull down to the side of the seat and with tension pull any slack you can find from the other front corner and staple to hold the tension in place

Next flip the fabric and do the same thing pulling and stapling to hold

Again open the corner like a flower

Fold in and lay the fabric down and pull fabric toward the center of the seat and staple

I then screwed the seats to the chairs and went from This

TO THIS