The Office Chairs

A couple of weeks ago Sue and I were in Modesto pawing through the Goodwill.

Its in interesting avocation. It satisfies Sue's need to shop, yet nets little in terms of cost.

There are two major Goodwill stores in Modesto. One is located on the famous "cruising street", McHenry. The other is out near Vintage fair Mall adjacent to Hwy 99. This store front form has had many children toys that are in really good condition. We have been gathering these up for Heather's child care facility in the city. There seems to be more diversity of items at this store then the other. The McHenry one has piles and piles of blue jeans. I thing that the ebay shoppers have a close eye on this one.

So a couple of weeks ago we were in the Mall Goodwill and there were a couple of office chairs in be back. They seemed to be sturdy and had comfortable bent backs. On closer inspection there were tags that identified them as furniture from an Oregon based insurance company. The tags on the seats indicated that the chairs were Bolin chairs.

Bolin chairs were made in Siler North Carolina. They made carriage struts in the early 1900's and then switched production to chairs and furniture. The chairs from the good will were made in 1969. They continued to make chairs until 1990 in Siler. There are not many of these chairs in the antique market. Someone that did the research on them speculates that people are just keeping them and they are passed down through the generations.

The price on these chairs was 8 dollars each. They were a handful to drag out of the store. They took two trips because of their weight and bulkiness.

Yesterday I started to tackle the refinishing of these chairs. Every time that I do this, I am reminded again that this is a process that requires a good deal of patience and a careful eye to detail. It is good for character building.

The chairs were covered with a gunky faux walnut oil stain. The years of cleaning them with wax oriented cleaners have left their toll too. The arms had some cracking on the surface.

The other part I was thinking about was the number of people that have sat in these chairs waiting for an insurance based decision. Will the company pay? And to what extent will it cover my costs? Insurance chairs may have a story of their own.

Formby's to the rescue. I have used this process to redo several fine pieces of furniture that did not have a poly urethane finish. I went down to my neerby Lowe's and invested in the jugs. This process does not pull out the patina generated by the chair over the years like stripping does. It is still a rubber gloved, steel wool process where the first coat goes on and breaks up the surface crud. The next coat gets into the finish and some of the stain. It has to use steel wool to scape and then be wiped clean with a rag. The cracks and the connections of the pieces of wood as it meets with the legs has to be been more carefully scrubbed and not allowed to maintain the darker stain. The refinish solution has a general smell similar to hair dye.

Once the overall finish has been removed, a couple coats of tung oil gets wiped on and a allowed to dry.

So far one chair has been done. It has cost about 40 dollars in materials to bring the chair up to refinished standards.

Take a look at the difference on the flickr pages and the facebook pages.

Have a great day.... Pat