Ottoman

In 2012 our leather ottoman had finally seen enough cat action that something had to be done about it. My first thought was to reupholster it somehow.

I never think "set it out for trash collection" when it comes to furniture, unless it's a piece that has severe structural damage. The ottoman did not -- it was as sturdy as ever. So I brought it down to the workshop (garage) and got started.

Purple Chair Rebuild, part 3

Continuing with this slowly-progressing project (see the earlier parts here and here), I'm to the fun part of this chair rebuild, where I start adding the wood that will transform this piece into something beautiful!

Since right now I have a mostly-plywood skeleton of a chair (because the original was fully upholstered), I have to make it prettier. There's nothing wrong with plywood as it can make some very attractive furniture -- I'll be leaving some of the stuff visible in this design -- but there's plenty of room for improvement here.

Purple Chair Rebuild, part 2

In the last post I started the purple chair rebuild, which at the time was just going to be a reupholstery project. After removing hundreds of staples, the chair is now ready to really be worked on.

If you remember, the chair sat for over two years, and during that time of resting I changed my plans for what this chair would turn into. I had two goals with it now: the first was to modernize it a bit, while the second was to cat-proof it. To me that meant replacing as much of the upholstery with wood as possible.

Purple Chair Rebuild, part 1

Although I expected to start my posts in this blog with old projects, things that I built over the last ten years or so, I instead decided to start with my current project: a rebuild of a chair.

Technically this is my latest project, but it also falls into the "old" category since it was actually started back in July 2011. Since this is a refurbishing project it started -- like any worthwhile remodeling -- with a fair amount of "demolition", and that's what this post talks about.

This is how it starts

Do you know what happens when you start a blog to help you remember the things you did in the garden, and it actually does what you thought it might and you have a place to keep track of things like what certain plants are called, when that special tree or bamboo went into the ground, or what the summer of XXXX was like in the garden?

Well in my case you start thinking about other things that you spend a lot of time doing that might be good to document in some interesting way. For instance, building things.