Restoring a Pair of Director's Chairs

Our church has a rummage sale once a year to raise money for the school and people donate stuff to sell. Maybe 3-5 years ago, my wife and I saw two old director’s chair wooden frames towards the end of the sale when they were just trying to get rid of stuff. The finish showed a lot of exposure to water – probably from sitting on a deck but the wood was solid. The canvas seat and back strap were long gone as well. At any rate, we got both for $5, stuck them in the garage for a “some day maybe” project.

My eldest daughter was getting married and somehow my wife envisioned using the chairs in an area for people to take photos. Armed with this, she talked me into digging out the old frames and figuring out next steps. By the way, I had a lot going on and was truthfully only semi-interested in doing the work but that changed part way in and you’ll see why.

Finding Replacement Canvas Covers

Thankfully, I didn’t have to do it all in a rush so I had time to do some digging. The first big question was what to do about the missing canvas. Well, I found out they are called “covers” and there are two primary kinds – ones that connect to the frame with a round wood rod and others that use a flat piece of wood. Our’s used a flat rod.

The next step was to find out if we could even find affordable covers. Well, I started searching on Amazon and there are actually a lot of premade options [click here to open a browser tab with them].

To measure your chair, lock them fully open and measure from left to right and for the seat – front to back. For the top, I did top to bottom. The left to right measures are really critical because you don’t want the canvas to be super loose – it will stretch and sag with time.

The height of the back cover and the depth of the seat are flexible – your measures are the maximums. At most X inches tall or Y inches deep.

We went with covers from “Everywhere Chair” on Amazon. Their supplied measures were: Seat Width: 22.5″ and Depth 15.25″. The back was 21.5″ wide and 6.5″ tall. This seemed to match the closest with what I was looking for so we ordered them.

What I don’t have photos of is that we test fit the covers as soon as we got them. This was both in case we needed to return them and also, I did not want to spend a bunch of time restoring the wood that we couldn’t get covers for.

Restoring the Wood

In the summer, my shop extends into my driveway. One afternoon, I took a serious look at the wood and realized there were a number of cracks I needed to deal with. Thankfully they were all narrow because you can quickly and easily fill them with thin super glue – also known Cyanoacrelate or “CA” glue. Lately, I have been using Starbond brand thin CA and it works great.

You can see the weathered finish and a hairline crack in this forearm.

I did 2-3 applications of superglue on that crack. The first application will really soak into the wood grain so you let that cure for a minute or two and then apply another and wait. Another and wait. You keep applying thin CA glue until it stays on the surface. Another option if you have slightly wider cracks is to sand the wood at the same time and pack the crack with the combination of sawdust and uncured/wet CA glue.

I kept walking around the two chairs and moving them around so I could see all of the surfaces. Any time I found a crack, I filled it.

Sanding & Finishing

Next up, I needed to sand the chairs to get rid of the worn finish and the CA glue. I like to use a Dewalt 5″ Dual Action sander and it quickly cleaned up everything using 150 grit sanding discs.

Used a Dewalt 5″ dual action sander with 150 grit sandpaper to clean things up. Also used a fine sanding spong from Ace to clean up the rounded surfaces and spot touch ups.

I went around both chairs fixing dings and removing the old finish.

As I mentioned above, I really wasn’t into it until the next part. I started applying Minwax Provincial stain and just a beautiful orangish brown started coming out. Once I saw that, I was all in – I did not expect the wood to take the stain that nicely or be colored the way it was.

This is the first coat after I wiped down the chair and removed the initial stain that hadn’t soaked in.

Mixwax Provincial stain is sem-transparent and oil based. It really soaked in nicely and I applied two heavy coats. I applied the first using a blue shop towel, let it sit for about 10 minutes and wiped it off. I then did it a second time. I took care to wipe down the metal hardware so the superficial stain wouldn’t turn into a sticky residue.

Installing the Covers

I backed off the screws for the arms of the chairs enough so I could insert the canvas with the flat wood slats in them. That slats sit a tad higher than I wouldhave liked. I debated cutting down the slats to half their thickness but instead figured I’d see what happens over time.

Just back off the bottom screws enough so the canvas with the seat slat can be inserted in the groove behind the hinge.

Notice the chair is not locked open. I needed it partially closed so I could easily insert the canvas seat and slats. In hindsight, I could have stained the ends of the slats but that didn’t occur to me at the time.

The back cover just slides on the posts. Lock the chair open only after both are installed.

Here’s another view of them at the wedding venue.

Summary

We got the frames for $5 and and then $29/ea for the replacement covers. We then used some CA glue, stain and sanding discs – I’d ballpark each of the two seats cost about $40/ea. I have no idea who made these frames but I think we saved a bit of money but that wasn’t the real goal here – we wound up restoring two chairs and creating some memories with them that we will have even longer.

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