TRANSFORMED, from broken to beautiful
It was almost amazing. So close. I’d cleaned up hubby’s treasured old radio cabinet, painted it the perfect color, added gold leaf highlights (because what isn’t amazing about gold leaf?), Rub ‘n Buf’d the hardware, replaced the yucky fabric that covered the speaker with fancy brass grating, and waxed and polished this sweet piece to perfection.
…
“I guess we should just throw it away.”
Hard words to utter, especially coming from a fixer upper kinda gal like me, but the cost of moving cross country was enormous and we were trying to lighten the load.
I
“Absolutely NOT!”, Mr. OTN stated emphatically. “This is a family treasure and we can fix it.”
This? A treasure?
A big hole in the seat, water damage from being left out on the porch, joints coming apart where the screws had rusted through. But he was right, it is a treasure to me. As I shared in a previous POST, this was the chair where I spent many hours as a young girl, rocking and dreaming about places far away. The rocker was in the old lake cabin my parents purchased over a half century ago, and it was old even then.
So at hubby’s insistence, along she came with us on our journey to the South.
These are Mr. OTN’s step-by-step instructions for Recaning a Vintage Chair. Though I had my doubts (the hubby has never showed much interest in being involved in my furniture hobby) he ended up having a lot of fun bringing this old girl back to life.
Materials used with links to purchase are shown at the end of this post. I receive a small amount of compensation when you purchase through my links.
Step 1: Remove old caning
Mr. OTN began by cutting away as much of the old caning as possible, followed by tucking hot water soaked rags down into the crevices to soften the old glue and allow for easier removal of the rest of the caning and the old wooden stays.
In this picture you can see that Mr. OTN used clothespins to tuck the rags down into the channels.
Once the glue was very soft he used a caning chisel to scrape away remaining glue, caning, and stray bits of wood. This required persistence and continued hot water soaks. To speed up the process we found my portable garment steamer to be quite helpful!
After allowing the chair to dry Mr. OTN cleaned up the remaining glue with his Dremel tool. Using the correct attachment for the Dremel is critical if you as you do not want to change the width of the grooves.
Step 2: Repairing the chair
This chair was coming apart at the seams due to heavy water damage . . .
. . . and we quickly realized that the screws that held the arms in place were rusted through completely.
Mr. OTN decided to use a wooden dowel instead of another screw for the repair. First he drilled a hole large enough for the dowel, drilling from the back of the chair all the way through into the arm.
Then he painted some wood glue on the end of the arm where it would attach to the back and also inside the hole.
Wood glue is your best friend on any woodworking project!
He inserted the dowel from the back of the chair through into the arm, trimmed the dowel flush to the back of the chair, added a little wood putty and sanded it smooth once it dried.
I stepped in here and cleaned things up a bit, using bleach on the black stained areas before painting the chair with two layers of paint. I used a Behr (Home Depot) clearance paint that we found in the garage of our new home (a no name paint) followed by a Behr knock-off of Annie Sloan’s Provence mixed according to my recipe for Home Made Chalk Paint.
Step 3: Caning
Mr. OTN began by cutting the caning to size plus 2-3″ of overlap. He then soaked the piece in hot water for approximately 30 minutes.
The tools he used for this part were clothes pins (a substitute for caning wedges) and a rubber mallet.
He pounded the halved clothes pins into the grooves in the chair, being careful to keep the cane as straight as possible.
Just like stretching a tapestry he put a couple of clothes pins on one side (back), stretched the cane taught, and put a couple of clothes pins on the other side (front). He did the two sides in the same manner.
Strips of wood spline are used to hold the cane in place. Mr. OTN cut four lengths to size, angling the cuts so they would match at the corners. Then he soaked the strips in hot water for 15 minutes to make them easier to work with.
He applied a generous amount of wood glue in the channel and laid the first piece of spline in place.
Next he pounded it down with a rubber mallet. Once the strip was firmly in place he removed the clothes pins. Make sure and remove the wedges before the glue dries.
Here is the second strip in place. Notice the nicely mitred corners 🙂
After adding spline to all four sides, Mr. OTN trimmed off the excess caning as closely as he could with sharp scissors . . .
. . . followed up with a box knife to trim off stragglers, and a sand paper block to smooth off rough edges.
And now, here are a few pictures of the final reveal!
Edges distressed to reveal the first color of paint.
Thank you Mr. OTN Cutie, for the wonderful job you did on restoring this family treasure. YOU are my treasure 😉
Blessings y’all,
Links to caning supplies (not linked are common supplies such as scissors, rags, small paintbrush, rubber mallet, drill, sandpaper, etc.):
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TheDIYShowoff, LifeOnLakeshoreDrive, SilverPenniesSundays, SundaysAtHome, RusticAndRefined, Spiritual Sundays, GiveMeGrace
There she was was, one among many in a jam packed antique mall. She’d been there a long, long time but today they’d put a new price on her in hopes of moving her out quickly to make room for better pieces. Many people came and walked around this petite lady, checking out her classic lines, only to walk away when they saw the raw signs of wear and the peeling veneer . . .
. . . until the one came, the one who was much like her. The one who chose her and took her home to give her a new life.
Many long days and nights were spent on her restoration, and in the process the lines began to blur between the life of the restorer and the one being restored as comparisons were made of their similarities. Peeling veneers were repaired, putty used to fill the larger cracks, and experiments with different colored paints were tried to see what she would become. No, this one was not meant to be a bold colored statement piece. Nor was she meant to be a sophisticated lacquered lady. This one’s past, it was determined, would be allowed to shine through the layers of paint that would eventually bring her to this soft and muted color. 
This petite one was solidly built by her original creator and as she is restored she becomes even stronger.
When the transformation is complete she looks different than before but her original character still shines through.
Her freshly cleaned and painted interior is carefully filled with treasures from generations past.
These treasures remind her of the values instilled within her by family members when she was young.
They also remind her of lessons learned from friends and acquaintances who intersected path along the way.
Of course she can’t help but recall lessons she learned through her own mistakes!
If you move in real close you’ll see this lady’s imperfections quite clearly . . .
. . . and the wear that came from living life long and full.
Life wounded this one deeply at times . . .
. . . but the pain that caused the visible scars is long past and nothing more than distant memory.
Mostly now she recalls the joys of her life. She has been blessed with much, MUCH joy!
See the layers of color representing childhood, young adulthood, motherhood, career, and now a sweet time of less responsibility but a passion to continue living life to the fullest! And always with the expectancy of, “What’s next?”
Though she was once closed and private, she doesn’t mind throwing her doors wide open now to share with others the pathway to becoming beautiful. Though it is at times frightening to her, and sometimes others don’t like what they see in her or what she has to share, she has been called to this purpose of giving back to others what she has so freely been given.
This one, she is different than those around her, and though she once detested her differences she is now at peace with who she is. The once shy girl has come out of her shell of insecurity. She laughs freely now and loves to make others laugh along with her. She believes that others can find the same freedom to be who they were created to be and loves to offer to let them borrow her hope until they can find their own. She is often heard to say,
Wait for the miracle! Click To Tweet
In reality, we are all different. Unique creations made to love and be loved by Father God. Fighting your way through life all alone can be hard. Sometimes it takes another person coming alongside to help point us in the direction God originally intended for us to go. God tells us that His way is easy and His burden is light. Won’t you place your life into the Master’s hands and let Him do the work of bringing you into complete restoration?
Take it from a little painted hutch,
There is no joy greater than to finally become what God originally intended us to be. Click To Tweet
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Blessings to you dear ones,
TheDIYShowoff, LifeOnLakeshoreDrive, NiftyThriftyThings, SilverPenniesSundays, SundaysAtHome
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This chair is beautiful to me. As a child I would sit rocking as I looked out at the water in from our lakefront cabin. I would hold my hand just beneath my eyes to block out the cabin’s porch and the beach beyond so I could see only the water. That made it easy to pretend that I was sitting on the deck of a cruise ship bound for distant lands.
Seriously, that’s what I did!
After years of being bounced from home to home and spending some time on the deck of our former lake house in Washington I was almost ready to take it off to the dump.
Almost . . . but not quite.
Along came Mr. OTN to the rescue! My dear hubby has been removing old cane and glue from the channels, as well as removing the rusted screws that had broken off inside the chairs arms and bleaching away the black mold. Now he’s ready to tackle the job of re-caning. What a gift of love.
I’ve decided that my old rocker deserves some color and this is where you, the most brilliant readers in the world, come in.
We will be using the rocker on the screened porch which has neutral colored furniture and blue accents so I’d like to paint it in a blue tone.
These are the colors I’m considering:
The color of my sample board is close to the color of the caning, which we aren’t painting, so you can see what the contrast would look like. The colors here are a tad bit washed out but I had to brighten them up a lot so you could see the true color.
So what do you think? What’s your favorite, one, two, three or four? We hope to get to the painting this weekend so I’d absolutely love to hear your opinion!
Blessings to you,
P.S. Just a reminder that Farragoz Old World Furniture Painting Course is offering a special rate to my readers now through the end of March. Instead of $150 for the course it is being offered for $99, an amazing value. Click the link below to register:
On any given day you might find me at home in old jeans, a too big sweatshirt, and a dingy Seahawk’s cap to hide the hair that I don’t want to mess with. My teeth will be brushed, my face washed . . . sorta . . . and my undies clean (LOL), but that will be the extent of my personal hygiene on one of my “moving mountains around the house” days! Will I invite you in if you stop by? Of course I will, though I may apologize just a bit for not being my normally gorgeous self! I’ll invite you in and I’ll do my very best to make you feel a warm welcome in my home!
What does hospitality mean to you?
Does it mean having your home spotless, the table laid with beautiful china, and a spread of gourmet delicacies? – By invitation only please!
Or does it mean a door that is always open no matter what condition the house is in, or what condition YOU are in for that matter?!
My word for the year is HOSPITALITY and I’m learning a whole new form of it living here in the South. I’ll be sharing more about that later this week in a Freedom Friday post . . . so come on back y’all!
So with thoughts of hospitality on my horizon, what a great time to share the Olioboard I created to plan out our dining room, the next project I’ll be tackling in our new home. This is the first time I’ve tried Olioboard and, though it was a little time consuming, once I got the hang of it it was a lot of fun! How revealing it was as I pinned items to the board and realized that some of the things I was thinking of using in this room didn’t look right together. I found this to be a great resource for planning out a room and also helpful at keeping one from making mistakes.
I’ll start with my inspiration piece, my own Great Blue Heron, (I’ve written a special story about him HERE) which has all of the colors I want to use in this room. Greys, tans, and different shades of green and blue.
Add to that a color washed grey buffet, my crystal chandelier, a vintage Karastan rug that belonged to my mother, a Craigslist dining table and chairs pulled from a pile in a garage, an antique store china cabinet found on sale (CHEAP) over the holidays (similar to the one in the picture but not the exact same piece), thrift store silver pieces collected over time, family china, boxwood greenery, a Trumeau style mirror and two wing back chairs (both on my wish list of things to find) and samples of traditional style wallpaper and upholstery fabric for the dining table chairs. I will paint some of the furniture and leave some of the wood natural as I like the mix of stained wood and painted furniture together.
It may not be Downton Abbey but our gifted and thrifted dining room will definitely have an elegant feeling when it all comes together!
I’m excited to begin work and even more excited to see how God is going to use our home to practice a little Southern hospitality in the year 2015!
Blessings,
