40. Kitchen chair side project.....

Last year I bought some old French school chairs from Ebay to use as dining chairs in our kitchen.  They were in a slightly worse state of repair than I originally thought so I decided to restore them as a little winter project.

They're all done now, so I thought I'd post a few pictures of the restoration:

Chairs as they arrived...

Not in great condition...

Original rubber feet seen better days

Plywood seats and backs removed

Some original graffiti.  Je t'aime.  Romantic lot the French.

Several of the chairs had cracked joints

Damaged joints rebrazed.  Didn't have an oxyacetylene torch available but MAPP gas in my propane torch seemed to do the trick.

Seat frames back from glass bead blasting

Frames powder-coated to match our kitchen

New angled plastic feet.  Many hours of Googling to find them...

Plywood seats and backs cleaned using white spirit and extra fine steel wool

Seats and backs simply waxed to keep the original patina (and French graffiti)

Seats rivetted back in place

The finished chairs.  Taken a lot of work but worth the result.