O-Gee Paint

On Saturday night a couple of weeks ago we had some friends over for dinner, conversation and games. And, as were sitting around the dining room table the mdf bottom to the seat I was sitting in busted out; this is probably because I got excited about winning and was bouncing up and down. Nonetheless, the seat had to be repaired with a new piece of wood and then, because the fabric on all the chairs was looking old we decided to recover all six chairs. With a new seat bottom cut out of 3/8″ plywood, a load of staples and some material from the fabric store I set to work.

The chairs were bought about 15 years ago, maybe longer, and needed some work. A couple of the plywood scroll-work backs were beginning to delaminate from being pushed too hard and needed gluing. For these I used a penetrating epoxy rot repair to soak into the edges. That stuff takes days to harden and is incredibly thin so it soaks into the wood grain just like water. It doesn’t really work well as a glue because there isn’t enough on the surface to create a bond. It eventually hardened and I used some more epoxy and clamps to make the backs stronger.

Because of the flexing several pieces of veneer have chipped off the seat backs exposing raw blonde colored wood. Also the carved tops of the backs and leg bottoms have suffered abuse and have chipped places throughout.
Over these areas I rubbed Old Masters Gel Stain
in red mahogany over the bad places and it took on a much fresher cleaner look substantially improving the looking good distance, LGD. The legs were easy enough to do with just a rag but the toppers needed the stain to be worked in with a brush. One of the best things about the gel stain is that it doesn’t run like a penetrating stain it is even heavier than a paint. It is more like a faux finishing glaze and so it will stay in place over glue joints and hard spots while easily wiping away from other places where it it isn’t wanted. The gel stains will dry overnight, too not like some penetrating stains I’ve used and tried to build up in past efforts.

My project is just about completed and the chairs look way better with minimal work.