shinyredthings.

Project Drexel Chair

So about eight months ago, I discovered at a thrift store in East Austin, a set of four Drexel Heritage Chairs in rather bad shape. Some had cracked wood, they’d obviously been in the smoking section of a hotel, and they’d been broken several times and badly patched up. I brought home the best of a bad bunch, for the princely sum of $1.50. 

I loved the curved, carved legs with their little feet (two of which were shattered in halves). I loved that it was old, and I loved that it was cheap. It had been fixed several times with a few dozen mismatched screws, and expanding foam filler (I know, what?). It had several layers of very cheap varnish on it which had gone sticky, which I painstakingly sanded off by hand whilst watching several seasons of The L Word. This revealed some amazing, solid, beautifully grained wood which I should have just left alone. Instead, I stained it close to its original colour - big mistake. The grain disappeared, the chair looked dingy again, and I hated it.

This chair has now been knocking around our house for months, unfinished. During the Christmas period, one of our Australian guests sat on it as we were short of chairs, being two people and a puppy in a small house unused to three more guests. The wood joining the seat to the back promptly shattered, and he sat on the ground for the remainder of his visit. I’ve been wondering what to do with it - do I glue it back together and risk it breaking and hurting my 100+kg (220lbs) boyfriend? Do I turf it? Or do I take inspiration from Ikea Hacker, and make something useful but not to be sat on? 

There’s not a lot of spare space in our house - its only 700 square feet. Everything I buy (ok, not everything, but most things that aren’t Transformers or deemed just plain awesome) have to have a purpose other than purely decorative. 

Looking around our bedroom, the one thing that drives me nuts with its sheer ugliness is the laundry basket. Its your basic hamper - a crossed metal frame with a white polyester interior, but its so crap that Bed, Bath & Beyond don’t even carry it any more. The bag fastens to the cross beams with velcro flaps - great in theory for taking the laundry out, but as soon as it has more than five items in it, the bag sags and the velcro comes open. I wish this useless piece of non-recyclable, badly designed trash which I bought in a hurry due to moving into our first apartment and needing lots of stuff quickly.

Anyway, long story short, I’ve decided that the chair shall be reinvented as my new laundry hamper and dress boy. I’ve decided that seeing as the stain is dark and terrible, I’m going to perform every designer’s first nightmare and paint it white. I’m sorry, but something’s got to give. I’m about to head to the Texas Coffee Roaster’s store and see if I can get some free/cheap coffee sacks to upholster the back in and sew together for the bag, and I’m planning on using it to store some of the “half-dirty” clothes that live on my floor. 

I’ll post pics when I have some.