One Good Chair from Two Broken Ones

A few weeks ago, while out for my morning walk, I found two wooden chairs sitting on the curb awaiting garbage pick up.

The base of each chair was still perfectly fine but the backs of both had spindles missing and/or broken.

I’ve been wanting a chair for our bedroom for Dave to hang his clothes on at night so we rescued them from the curb.

If you happen to make a similar find, here are step-by-step instructions to transform this:

Into this:

First the backs of both chairs need to be removed. On the back of the top rail small wooden plugs cover the screws holding the rail onto the outside spindles.

Insert a small screw into the plug just far enough to provide a grip on it.

Next, pry it out using the claw edge of the hammer.

Remove the screw from the plug and set the plug aside to be reused later.

Using the appropriately headed screw driver remove the screws holding the outside spindles to the top bar/rail.

Gently tap the top with a hammer to loosen the inside spindles.

If one of the spindles refuses to come off, you may have to be a bit more persuasive.

In some cases where the spindle has broken off at the top, you may have to drill out the hole in order to install a “new” spindle.

In other cases, you might be able to use the same method used to remove the small wooden plugs from the back of the top rail.

Next drill out any broken spindle ends from the seat of the chair.

To drill out the holes closest to the outside spindles, you may have to remove them. To do this, turn the chair over, loosen and remove the bolts.

Once all the spindle holes are cleaned up, use the unbroken spindles from both chairs to create one good chair.

Replace the screws in the top of the outside spindles.

The final step is to reinsert the small wooden plugs that were set aside earlier. Tap the plugs in place using a hammer.

Here are the two chairs once again.

The chair on the left is now in the corner of our bedroom ready each night for Dave to hang his clothes on.  In another post, I’ll show you what we did with the chair on the right.

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