Refinished Arm Chairs

These two chairs were salvaged and refurbished with added arm rests, a full-length back rest, reupholstered, and refinished with a hard wax oil-based finish.

Two different approaches were taken to remove the original polyurethane finish. One chair was taken apart to make removing the finish easier but required more time later for reassembly. The other chair was left assembled which required more time to sand off the finish, but no reassembly. I estimate that both approaches ended up taking approximately the same amount of time.

New Red Oak arm rests were added with the angle of the arm rest support matching the angle of the chair frame. The supports are recessed into the bottom of the arm rest. The arm rests and supports are all connected to each other and the frame of the chair with 3/8" dowels. All the dowel holes were then plugged with a 3/8" plug that was laser cut from a contrasting 1/4" thick wood burl. The arm rest was rough cut on a band saw and routed to final dimension using a laser cut template and flush trim bit on a table router.

The back rest frame was rebuilt to be full length. The new frame pieces were made from plywood and the old frame was used as a template. Pieces from the old frame were salvaged and used in one of the new backrests. For the cushions, the old foam was reused, and new foam was purchased as needed. Everything was reupholstered with a new grey heather fabric.

For finishing, the chair was sanded to 220 grit and finished with Rubio Monocoat pure.