good-bye chairs

My name is Michelle Lynne Goodfellow, and I have a chair fetish. Well, probably not. That is - if fetishes have anything to do with sex. Although... never mind.

But anyhow... I have a chair addiction, I guess. I can't stop buying chairs. And recently I've decided I need to get rid of some of my stuff, and the obvious place to start (because I have so many of them) seems to be there.

Above are two cream-coloured kitchen chairs I got from my local Goodwill back in the fall. I love the way they look - they were perfect in my kitchen when I brought them home - but they really aren't in great shape. A male guest sat in one of them for about an hour one night... and he experienced rung fail.

So I decided to put them out on Sunday afternoon (the day before garbage day this week; London's garbage pick-up rotates on a six-day schedule), and before I carried them to the road, I took these pictures. Also decided to get rid of another chair... but more on that in a minute.


I loved the way the late afternoon sunlight diffused as it sifted through the air of my front room.








These chairs had some of my favorite features, including rough undersides and amateur repairs.




I love the brushmarks of paint on the underside of the seat.










Natural patina...






One of my own botched repair jobs - after one of the cats knocked the chair over and broke a rung outright.


Loose joints...




So below is the other chair - one that a Toronto friend of mine found at the side of the road in Riverdale. I loved the bones of this mid-20th century teak chair so much that I took it home, even though the seat was a mess.


I painstakingly pulled up an old upholstery job, and cut away the original caning on the seat. All the upholsterer's tacks gashed my knuckles as I spent hours trying to pull them up too.




Actually, on second thought I think the wood is beech. But what do I know?


In the end I gave up and replaced the seat with some old plywood boards, cut to size. (Not seen here.) If I didn't have a dearth of space, I'd probably keep this chair around just for the beauty of its worn edges...

new rocking chair

This post was originally published on my personal blog on May 20, 2009.

I'll admit it, I have a rocking chair fetish. This is my latest (not so new, now - I think I got it two weeks ago) acquisition: A bentwood rocker found at the Rotary rummage sale. It cost me $15. I sit in it every day.



Bentwood curlique. I like furniture that is useful AND looks beautiful. And that totally makes me wonder how they got the wood to bend like that.

rocking chair

This post was originally published on my personal blog, the rest of my life, on April 11, 2009.

I have loved rocking chairs since I was a kid. Their soothing action always calms me. It wasn't until I saw contemporary remakes of traditional designs, however - with 21st-century proportions and finishes - that I began coveting a rocking chair (or seven) for myself. I still have this dream of filling my living room with no other seating but rocking chairs, so all my guests can comfortably rock away the hours whenever they came to visit. (Or get suitably seasick. Which might also be fun.)

East of London there is a farmer's market called Trail's End, where a furniture seller carries finished and unfinished oak rockers that would look at home on any gracious country veranda. I visit them every once in a while, sitting in the generously-sized chairs and dreaming of a day when my budget will allow me to purchase one of my own.

Today my friend Laurie suggested an impromptu visit to Goodwill to find a single dinner plate to replace one I'd broken earlier this morning; while in the store, I saw a gorgeous wooden rocker with simple lines and a wide seat, and I was smitten. It was marked $49.99, and I decided it would be my birthday present from my family. When I took it to the cashier, she informed me that it was 50% off! Whoo-hoo! - a rocking chair in perfect condition for 25 bucks.

The sturdy chair (pictured above) is now in my middle room, where its simple wood finish blends perfectly with my bookshelves and floor. A little piece of heaven. Doing a little happy dance about my rocking chair right now...