The Great Chair Project

Last year around the time we bought our flat, I became obsessed with furniture and spent untold hours poring over magazines, catalogues, decorating books and the internet. (To be honest, I haven’t completely stopped, just cut back.) I have a little notebook full of sketches, clippings and “inspiration” pictures to show for it. At one point, I developed a short-lived (and as yet unfulfilled) thing for cuckoo clocks. Another sub-obsession involved the hunt for a chair that I was convinced we needed for our new living room. I ended up with a Barcelona chair, which now resides in the bedroom as there is no room for it in the living room. Apparently my homemade floorplan wasn’t as precise as I thought…

Anyway, during my research, I ran across Jimmie Martin and became very interested in this chair:

More precisely, I became interested in copying it. We have a large Jamie Reid "God Save the Queen" print (in red, green, black and yellow) over our fireplace and solid red and black sofas. I thought with Union Jack throw cushions in different colourways and that chair, we could get a sort of mod/punk/Cool Britannia vibe going. However, space (and lack of a chair) did not allow.

Well, now I have a chair. I spotted two of them sitting outside a house up the street from ours, surrounded by bags of rubbish. This made me think they were being thrown out, but instead of being out by the road, they were right up against the house (where frat boys would keep a yard couch). After about a week of scoping it out, I got Matthew to come with me and we got/stole/acquired/liberated one of the chairs. I set it in our conservatory next to the radiator to dry out and sprayed it with Febreeze. I also checked out a book on re-upholstering from the library. That’s about as far as I’ve got so far.

My plan is to remove the existing upholstery and save it to make patterns for new pieces, sand the frame and paint it glossy black, then re-upholster with black canvas and new silver tacks. The back will be appliquéd with black and white stripes to form the Union Jack. Then it will go in Matthew’s studio, where he can sit in it while surveying his record collection.

Aside: The more I thought about it, the more I wanted a chair to re-do for myself (probably a la Squint but a bit calmer). Unfortunately (or not, depending on whether you are an easily excitable prospective re-upholsterer or the person who lives with her) by the time I went back for the other chair with our friend Colleen, it was gone, along with all the rubbish and recycling that had piled up around it. We found some other chairs in another yard and a sofa that looked to be in pretty good condition but didn’t drag anything home. Such is the nature of scavenging…

So, any bets on how long it will take me to finish this project?