Before, After and the Three Months in-between.

A few months ago we spotted this old lounger in the 'throw away' section of our complex. I couldn't believe someone would want to throw it away, but then upon closer inspection I could see why they thought it probably wasn't worth trying to sell. Anyway, we saw it and thought, "Challenge accepted!" (And who doesn't love a free thing, right? Well we do, that's for sure.) So we picked it up and took it back to our flat - albeit a little sheepishly - it's always awkward scratching in the rubbish.

 

We sat on it a few times and realised that the seat wasn't going to hold out much longer, so we thought we'd just take it off.  Overly ambitious idea number 1.  It was back-breaking work, tedious messy and only mildy satisfying. Anyway, after much hacking and picking, we got it all off with just a few fingertip casualties.

 

At this point it did look interesting in a rather poetic kind of way, but now we had a large, obstructive metal frame that we could no longer sit on.

 

And so began the next phase, overly ambitious idea number 2. I thought I would just cut up strips of fabric and and punch them together with studs, to form the new seat cover. Cutting the fabric turned out to be a rather painful experience: I gave up trying to cut it straight or get the pieces totally even, and just decided it would have a bit of a rustic look - a stretegy never far from my mind when I take on new things - one thing I did get right though was to use fake leather, so I didn't have to worry about hemming the edges after I cut it. The stud idea also backfired a bit as I had never worked with studs before and hadn't realised how expensive they become when you need over 100...

 

So we settled on these things (in the picture below) - we needed so many I literally bought all the ones they had in the shop which meant they weren't all the same - but by this time I was whole-heartedly convinced that this was the look I was going for so it was ok. But this step turned out to be overly ambitious task number 3, as we needed to use a monkey wrench to clamp them together after forcing them through the tough fabric. I say "we", but actually it was Joe because I didn't have the strength for such a task.

 

 

Eventually we got it to this point, but the whole process had been such an ordeal that we stopped, for some time. And so for about three months we had this sitting in our lounge - which is not that big, it's worth noting. It kind of reminded me of a horse, so for a short bit I smiled at it and thought of it as our white stallion. But that lasted about a day, and then I hated it for a lot longer after that. And then it just sat there and stared at us for ages, after which I just stopped looking at it.

Then one fine day I woke up and decided we were going to tackle and finish this project, motivated by frustration more than any kind of creative inspiration. In fact, I think it was even a little angry as I cut the final strips.  I may have let out some sort of weak war cry when we finally finished it. At last it was done.

 

And now I must admit, I do think it's kind of beautiful. But even though the project was now complete we had one more problem, we realised we didn't have anywhere to put it. Overly ambitious idea number 4 - thinking we have space for a lounger in our flat.

 

And that is the story of this chair, and how sometimes ideas can be problematic and awkward. And that a few photos on a blog often don't reveal the frustrating inbetween aspects of re-working objects. So from now on, if we see anything that sparks ideas of reviving, we have to make sure we have a very clear plan of where that thing will go and why we think it will be a good addition ot our life.

 

Before and After, and that little white gap in-between that makes life look so simple.