Dining Set

In mid December, I had someone contact me about doing a custom dining set for them.  I was really excited about this - one, it was my first time doing an entire SET rather than bits and pieces.. and two, I was flattered someone wanted ME to do it.  We've amazingly been doing the whole process via phone & email, which is pretty impressive.  Between craiglist purchases and delivery coordination, to sharing paint codes so I could get the exact colors - it's been a fun adventure.  I'm almost done, and I thought now that I have a good line up of pictures, it would be a good time to start the sharing.  So over the next few days, I'll show the journey that has been, the dining set. Let's catch you up to speed, here are the chairs as they arrived:

 Oh my....

 Someone, somewhere, loved that print - and got a LOT of use out of them. These chairs were really.... something.  I was so curious to see what was causing the interesting  lumpy-saggy front thing they had going on. 

First things first, I took the seats off. I was SO happy and relieved to see that the base was wood, and not some crazy spring contraption that would have tripled the time on these.  But look at all these layers I found! At least 6, and whoever covered them (over and over again......) just wasn't really feeling the whole, remove some layers FIRST idea.  Notice the clever use of old comforters as a padding between layers, No wonder they had such a lumpy shape before! I found a brown and cream label that said "Davis Cabinet Company - makers of fine furniture - Nashville, Tennessee"  I'm going to say at least 1960's.

 

 Why hello there!  These chairs just aged themselves.. this is the original padding on the wood.  Mesh, straw, and pure unfiltered cotton. You can see all the little husks in it! But, this is a new day and age and we have super-cushy synthetic padding now, so these got a good salute - then the boot. Haha, how cheesy...

Here they are, all six, lined up and cleaned up, ready to be worked on. Keep an eye out tomorrow when I show you what happened next.