Return of the Thanksgiving Chair Curse

As discussed in a recent post, I’ve been reupholstering my dining room chairs.

I always seem to end up doing dining room chairs in conjunction with Thanksgiving. And there always seems to be a catch.

Long time readers will recall the family frenzy a couple of years ago to finish my brother’s chairs so we could sit down! (Danish Teak Chairs: From Ratty to Renewed). A simple redo turned out to have a weird assembly twist that slowed the whole process and required all hands on deck.

This year, two of my own chairs decided to put up a fight.

The screws beneath the seats insert into a cap on the top side of the wood, like this one. Unfortunately, several screws had been overtightened at the factory. Trying to detach them caused the prongs holding these caps in the wood to bend and the caps to simply spin. There was no way to unscrew them, and brute force to remove the seat, well…

GASP! The result was a broken corner in the base support under the cushion. Deep breath. (Cue Six Million Dollar Man music…) This can be rebuilt!

First, I traced around the old base onto new MDF board. Here it is, in the process of having the center hole cut. You’ll also notice four new holes being drilled to insert the old screw caps. I straightened the prongs of the damaged caps and hammered all the caps into the holes (as in the pic above).

Then I put all the layers back together as was demonstrated in my recent post. (See Dining Chairs: From Irony to Harmony) Finally, I screwed the troublesome seats back on the frames — taking care NOT to overtighten the caps like the factory did.