Day Nine: Springing Ahead

See what I did there? I used Daylight Savings to make a funny.
Anyway... I'm getting a little bit ahead of myself here, but I was at the store the other day and I got to thinking about wood stains. I think I know what color I want the chair to be, but I have no clue about the seat and the back.
All my research recommended sealing the fiber rush with varnish to protect it. But there are lots of kinds of varnish available, including colored varnish. That got me to wondering if I should color the seat and back to match the chair or should I pick a coordinating color? Or should I just go with a clear varnish and leave the rush its natural color?
Thoughts?

Day Eight: I have an idea

I've been thinking about the amount of work that one arm took. I've also been looking at it rather closely. What I've determined is that I went through an entire pack of sandpaper for one arm because it was so dirty. So what I've decided to do is wash the chair before proceeding any further with sanding.

Day Seven: Sanding, Sanding, Sanding, etc.

One arm down! Woo hoo!

Day Six: More Sanding and More Deconstruction

Sanding is progressing very, very slowly. This is mostly due to the fact that I can only really work on the chair after work.
I discovered today that getting into all the little nooks and crannies is going to be exceedingly difficult unless I actually do take the chair apart. This led me to another discovery: whoever made this chair was inordinately fond of nails. I have so far succeeded in removing one arm. This involved in the removal of sixteen nails. I'm not kidding. Sixteen!

Day Five: Sanding

No pictures today, but I'm starting to comprehend the vastness of this project. Every bit of this chair has to be sanded to give me a clean slate for staining. But it doesn't just have to be sanded. It has to be sanded three to four times - each time with a finer grain.
I have a sanding block for the straight parts to make sure they come out nice and even, but there aren't a whole lot of straight parts on this chair. That means bascially lots and lots of sanding by hand. The next few posts may simply comprise pics of my progress in the coming days.

Day Four: Deconstruction Part 2

Upon closer inspection, it turns out that the seat of the chair is just screwed into the frame. A few minutes of loosening some incredibly rusty screws, and the seat came easily away from the rest of the chair. At this point, I'm not sure if I should continue taking the chair apart so that I can reglue the joints. I'm gong to go ahead and start sanding. Maybe I will have decided by the time I'm done.

Day Three: Deconstruction Part 1 1/2

As you can see from the pictures, the deconstruction isn't finished yet. In fact, I haven't actually worked on it since my last post. Hence, the title of this post. I will be working on the chair some more this weekend.


You can see how the frame prohibits removing the rest of the old seat.