The Library Chair. And a friendly reminder.

Yes indeedily-do, the Library Chair!

As you may recall, I got this chair from a guy on Craigslist.  It's been sitting in the garage ever since. Why?  Because it was stinky smelly.  And it had lots of icky spider web balls underneath and ew yucky yuck!  Eww!!  Gives me the willies.

Since I'm in-process with the concrete countertop and I made the choice to coat the interior of the form with the same polyurethane that I used for the pantry floor, I have to wait and do other things.  Finn smeared his paw through the what-I-thought-was-dry-and-set-after-three-days poly yesterday, so I opted to do a second coat.  Which means it needs to sit, dry, and cure much longer than I anticipated.  Aaarrrgggg!!!

Here's the form with the built up piece masking for the sink cutout, first coat of poly on.

Oy.  I hope I didn't make a mistake with the poly.  Insert biting of nails here.

Anywhooo, the chair, right?!

Heavier than I thought it would be, that bugger.  Mike had ever so kindly taken it out of my car for me so I didn't know.  Boy, I'll feel it tomorrow -- lugging it out of the garage, up the back steps, up to the second floor, down the hall....It was worth it though.  Some suffer for fashion; me, I suffer for design.  ;)

So.  It was loose when I originally bought it so I flipped it over today.  I had previously torn off the black webby covered bottom fabric.  Yuck!!

Ew ew ew, spider yuckies!!

Underside and Finn, my ever-present helper pooch, making sure it's safe for me to touch.

All those years of dealing with crappy crummy furniture while doing props pays off here.  But it's not hard to fix and adjust a chair.  Just take a studied look at it, unassemble it in your brain, then take it apart, work with it, and reassemble.

I started by taking the whole leg base piece off.

Turns out the metal part that spins the chair was loose on the legs part, so I tightened the screws down.  A foot was loose as well; tightened that puppy up.

Before.

While I had the leg base section off I thought I'd try some Restor-a-Finish* stuff that I picked up for a different piece of furniture.

After.

In this case it made so little improvement I thought eh, not worth a lot of effort.  I gave the metal spinny part a good spray of WD-40 then reattached the base back to the chair.

Part of the problem with old chairs or old furniture or old what have you is old screws and old screw holes that aren't excited about being updated or messed with.  The old screws didn't want to go back in and stay in so I went foraging through my large collection of mismatched attachment devices and found what I think go with some Ikea thing.  They were wider and they worked.  I couldn't get one to stay in the fourth hole but the base was secured pretty solidly so I said screw it.  Ah ha, pun!

And here is the chair in the room.  Per my Mom's great suggestion, I moved my fave little table from my grandparent's house into the room and I think it works quite well.  Good job Mom!

Nice, right?!  Loving it.

I discovered that the Stella Maris light fixture I installed doesn't have a long enough cord and chain to be swagged over the chair so I'll give that some thought.  I could always get a longer cord and longer chain.  We'll see.

But cool, right?  Works well with the black paint, with the pallet wood blinds, with all the books!

So now I can definitely start planning and envisioning how I want to create the DIY rug, what shape it should take, how I want to execute it.  I'll sit in the room on the opposite end for a bit, stare, tilt my head a few times, and it'll come to me.  I'm excited!  The ball is a-rollin' now, folks, look out.

On another note....

Yesterday at the park we had a run in with an off-leash dog, Finn and I.  Finn, as I've mentioned, we don't know entirely yet and he's been reacting not-so-friendlish towards other dogs, so we stay clear.  It's tough because there are irresponsible folks in the park.  It hit me like a pile of bricks the other day, the realization:  he's protecting me, keeping me safe from other dogs, hence his reactions.  Hailey protected me but she was ok with other dogs.

We came around a bend where the path is hidden by a hill and up popped a woman with her dog running all amok.  Finn and I stopped, kinda trapped in the situation with nowhere to go as they were already too close to turn heel.  Before I knew it, her dog was running at us.  I yelled to her to stop her dog several times, but she didn't bother to utter a word and looked unfazed.  I heard her talking to the dog just prior so I knew she was capable of speaking.  The dog ran up, Finn jumped straight up in the air, hopped to one side then jumped full on square, straight up huge and tall right into the other dog's face.  I freaked inside.  I didn't know what Finn was going to do and in a flash imagined a terrifying blood bath.

Thankfully the dog ran off and no one was hurt but ooooh my goodness was I upset.  I snapped at the woman, "you should leash your dog."  She didn't even look at me, turned and walked away with her dog still off leash.

I wrote a letter to the alderman.  I'm contacting the police to respectfully request ramping up leash law enforcement.  It's dangerous.  For everyone.  No one, absolutely no one ever knows their dog 100%, how they will react each and every time.  It's impossible.

We have a police officer friend who said to call 911 when we see off leash dogs.  I'm not gonna lie, I'll feel weird calling 911 about that, but I will do it.

We won't stop going to the park though.  I won't stop telling people to leash their dogs, snide rude responses be damned.  I will be the Crazy Park Leash Bitch if I have to be.  I just hope they don't end up being sorry for the folly of their ways.

I know you all know this but please leash your dogs.  xo

*The Restor-a-Finish is an Amazon affiliate link.  Mwah, thanks!