A favorite pasttime of mine and my husband's is to "go junking." Whenever we feel like we need to go do something fun for a day, we head off to search out any and all thrift stores within a day's drive. I guess I should be glad that we don't have more expensive tastes but really, we are terrible. One year for our anniversary we drove to Phoenix (we lived in Arizona then), stayed in a nice hotel and went to different thrift stores for three days. THREE DAYS! Sometimes I just have to laugh about that because out all the things we could've done (like gone on a real vacation) we chose three days of uninterrupted treasure hunting.
Even if we are ridiculous, sometimes it does pay off. When I came across this rocker in a thrift store recently I just stared at it, probably for a solid 10 minutes, making sure that I was understanding what I was looking at. Usually when I see something really cool for a ridiculously good price, I'm reading the tag wrong or it was a typo. But not this time! I was able to score this beauty for only $15! It was a little worse for the wear when I found it, but luckily the only problems were cosmetic and it was an easy (if not a little time consuming) fix.
The Full House era cushion was coated with a thick layer of dust and I think dander from a cat who was very well loved, I'm sure.
The finish was chipping off in places...
And there were remnants of a past remodeling project.
After I had the rocker in pieces and I'd pried out all 6,000 staples that was holding the old fabric on, I carried everything out to the porch. I spent an entire morning sanding this baby down with a hand sander. It worked great; the problem was that it didn't fit in between all the bends and curlicues. Those had to be done by hand.
I used two cans of spray polyurethane. It was easier than painting it on with a brush but probably more expensive. It was about $7 a can but it was just about foolproof. Here's an in-progress shot. The left side of the rocker has one coat of poly and the right one is unfinished.
Sparkling after three coats!
While the polyurethane was drying I got to work on the cushion. The rocker originally had a cane seat that a previous owner had replaced with the cushion, so there was already this nice piece of plywood cut to the perfect size. The seat only had a 1" chair pad on it and wasn't some place that you wanted to sit for very long! I went down to the fabric store and got some new 2" thick foam to help it out a little. Way better. 
After I stretched the fabric over the cushion and stapled it to the bottom of the plywood seat, I had to figure out how to attach it back onto the rocker since I was doing it differently then how it was when I found it. When I asked my brain what to do it said, "Stop trying to trick me. That's probably math or something," and refused to help. Husband suggested that I make the seat how I wanted and attach it with L brackets, so that is what I did. Since the plywood sits on top of the seat, it didn't need to be able to hold a ton of weight, just make sure they seat didn't fall off. Here's a shot of him, being awesome.
And here's what those L brackets look like underneath.
And here it is finished!
Check out those sexy curves!
Now I have a cute little reading chair in my office. And the best part is, the dogs won't bug me when I sit in it! They try to put their paws on me and poke me with their poky toes but that makes the chair move, which is terrifying. It may be the only thing any of them are afraid of, short of being put on top of the entertainment center (I am not responsible for that).
Does anybody else have any trash-to-treasure projects they've been working on?
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