Mix and Match

I've been looking for a mid century desk to host the family pc for a while now.  I kind of knew what I wanted, but just wasn't finding it.  I finally found it in the basement of an estate sale I went to last weekend.  It was the second day of the sale, so it was half price.  I paid $4.  I can't believe no one snatched it up.

A little polishing and tightening of the legs is all it needed.

The knobs on the drawer were a little tarnished.  The wire wheel on my grinder took care of that.

Before

After

Now we just needed a chair to go with it.  At the same sale, they had 4 mid century chairs for sale.  One was coming apart at the joints.  That one was priced at $1.  The others were priced at $9.  Of course I picked up the $1 chair.  I had all the materials I needed to repair it.  Just add some time and effort.

All of the chairs had been recovered in some truly ugly fabric.

Disassembly started.

Once I took the seat off, it practically fell to pieces.

First I sanded the entire chair and cleaned up some old repairs on the joints (glue and brackets).  I had to replace a couple of the dowels as well.  I just cut some of my own from a piece of dowel I had.

I applied 2 coats of Minwax Fruitwood stain followed by 3 coats of Minwax semi-gloss polyurethane.

I strengthened the joints up by running a couple screws through the corner blocks.

Next I needed to recover the seat cushion.  My wife happened to find a couple yards of vintage fabric at another sale for $2.

I'm not sure of the vintage, but it had the look I wanted. It's by Jay Yang who apparently is somewhat known.  Anybody familiar with him?

My wife did the recovering and I think it turned out great.  She also bought an extra piece of foam for added cushioning -- $5.

The finished product.  Total cost for desk and chair, $12.