IdeaDesignMake: November 2014

These Mid-Century low-rider lounge chairs arrived at our shop via one of our customers who had been working on these guys as a side project for a while. He told us that he had gotten as far as he possible on these loungers and needed us to add the cushion and upholster this quirky little frame! Also, he needed to choose a fabric and ultimately decided on one that we have on hand. It is hard to tell from the photo, but the color of the fabric is a gray-brown that has a light orange overlapping rectangle pattern all over it. We think he did well with his decision, because the scale of the pattern is perfect for the small frame of the chair, along with having a Mid-Century era vibe all its own.

Well, at a quick glance, the chair appears simple enough to upholster, however it is not as cut-and-dry as it seems. If you notice, the chair seat and back are not only trapezoidal in shape, but also concave --just a little tricky, to say the least! Oh, and one more thing, as we got into this project, we noticed that the legs of the chair were showing quite a bit of rust. With that noted, we recommended to our client that the chairs could definitely use some cleaning and re-finishing----OMG, we always seem to create more work for ourselves!

So here is the chair frame before we did anything to it. As you can see, it has some really sweet lines. Notice the nylon ball feet and brass sleeves around the bottom of the chair legs. The brass could use polishing with a SOS pad or even a fine-grain sandpaper, but the client said that he was fine with the dull patina on the sleeves.

This image shows one of our first steps in cutting and fitting the new foam to the back and seat panels. We opted for a thicker, denser foam cushion that would provide as much comfort and support for the user as possible.

Once the foam was fitted to the seat panels, the fabric was essentially adhered to the foam with a spray glue, then pressed and smoothed before wrapping it. Finally, all that was left was to staple it to the bottom of the panel. **Just to avoid any messy views of the underside where all the staples and trimmed fabric are seen, Adam cut a piece of vinyl fabric out in the same shape of the panels and attached it the same way to the bottom side.

The brass leg sleeves and ball feet were taped off first before the primer coat wend on the chairs.

The final new finish looks great! We opted to use an auto-body paint that is black with a gold fleck. It sprays on thin, so you have to be careful of creating runners! Great alternative to the regular spray paints if you are looking for anything that is a metallic. One other issue with this paint is that it is almost double the price of other typical spray paints and the can is half the size :(

All done! Their not at the shop anymore if you were planning to come see. At least, I was able to get a final shot of these before our client came by to pick them up! He was thrilled to see them and could not have been more happy! He did promise to send me a photo of the chairs in their new set-up at his house. Oh, I can't wait to see it! Every time, Adam and I make something and it goes to a new home, it always leaves you with a feeling like someone has just adopted your puppy

Cheers Ya'll!

I wouldn't necessarily say that we have been on a vacation all this time, even though we did take a week last month to travel to Germany. Actually, since we have been busy bees working on running our own 'Bricks-and-Mortar' business these last several months, the Blog has been dropped by the way side. So, with that said, Adam and I have decidedly committed to keep the IDM Blog as current as possible!

Before, getting overly wordy with all that has happened and with all of the many projects that IDM has had the great opportunity to work on over the last several months, we think it might be best to show some of our favorite IDM originals along with some really cool re-designs!!!