Years ago I found this rocking chair at the Whistle Stop Antique Mall, in Franklin, NC. I fell in love with it and so I bought it. My friend Lynda brought it down months later in her truck and we were just so excited to see it at my house. We sat in it and rocked, but every time we did there was bits of grass and straw on the floor under the chair. Finally we tipped it over and took a peek in the bottom of the chair to find what we believe was a rat or mouse nest from years ago. There were bones........... I will just leave it at that. There was also some broken webbing, so I sent rat's nest chair to someone who repairs antiques and thought we were good to go.
Fast forward to the present. I rarely sat in rat's nest chair because the bottom seemed to be missing springs or stuffing on one side, so much for that repair person fixing the chair. It would tilt off the platform if you rocked to much, still I sort of loved it for the beautiful chair that it was. When I recovered all my kitchen chairs I decided to take on rat's nest chair, good or bad I would see it through to the end.
Let me just say that rat's nest chair was even more disgusting than I thought it would be. It was covered in some weird bordello fabric on top and some crazy avocado green/orange fabric from the 70's on the bottom. And yes my friends it was stuffed with horse hair, a sign of a very quality piece of furniture from the late 1800's. There was burlap wrapped horse hair bundles in the bottom of the chair and loose horse hair on the top and bottom of the chair. The stuffing must have been cotton and it was very, very old.
Upon further inspection I found that it had springs but only one of the springs was actually tied to the chair, the rest were broken and just hanging there among all the horse hair. I swear I needed a hazmat suit to take this apart. I did wear a mask and gloves and showered for what seems like hours once I got it taken down to the bare bones.
Poor rat's nest chair was just covered with nails and upholstery tacks. It took me three hours to remove them all. I saved some of them and left them in the chair because I thought the whole thing would fall apart if I took them all out. Then I did a whole lot of studying up on how to refinish the chair. I believe this is an Eastlake platform rocking chair. It was probably made in the later 1800's. And to keep the integrity of the chair you must keep the horse hair and springs. So I kept all of that in a big garbage bag and just let the chair breath for a week or so.
After a week of letting rat's nest chair rest I decided to get busy with the redo. I also decided that no matter how wonderful the chair was stuffed with 140 year old horse hair and maybe remnants of a rat's nest and very rusty springs that I just could not put all of that back into the chair. So I got busy redoing the chair the way I felt was cleaner and safer for all of us. I worked webbing onto the bottom of the chair with a thick layer of batting on top of that. I covered the bottom with a cream utility fabric and stapled it in place. I also put webbing on the top layer of the chair, but did not take photos of it.
I placed a dense piece of foam on the webbing and surrounded it with lots and lots of stuffing. I kept it all in place with more utility fabric.
The back of the chair was a problem because it did not have a piece of wood that went in the space for stability, and any wood where the fabric had been attached was just coming apart because of all the nails that had been used in it over the years. I found the perfect solution with this super dense cardboard that came with Little Buddy's bed form IKEA. It worked perfectly. My husband drilled it into the actual wood of the chair and I put dense tape on it just to make it a wee bit more stable.
Here it is from the front, you can see the disintegrating wood where all the fabric had been attached.
I put a thin layer of foam on the inside of the back of the chair and then filled it with lots and lots of stuffing, then used more fabric to keep it in place.
The one mistake I made, probably among many, is that I should have done the top of the chair completely before I took on the bottom. It was very, very hard to get the fabric nailed in place at the bottom of the top of the chair because the bottom cushion did not leave me much room. Still I did the best I could and hopefully it will hold.
The bottom cushion was a breeze to put into place. I used upholstery tacks and staples to get this fabric in a hopefully permanent position. I added the decorative edge with a glue gun and nailed in the decorative nails just to add more stability.
I had to be creative with the back of the chair because I ran out of my beautiful fabric and after 10,000 trips to Joann's for this chair I was not going back for more. I used more of the utility fabric from the bottom to hold in all the fluff, and a bit of the nice fabric. It doesn't look bad and frankly not many people will even see the back of the chair.
I asked Little Buddy to give it a test drive, he said he liked it. It is a small rocker, one built for a woman I believe because generally women were a bit shorter in those days, not my 5 foot 10 inch height. And I did stuff it very full thinking the stuffing would sort of condense the more it was sat on. So rat's nest chair is reborn into something I can use and I think it looks rather nice. I know all of you antique lovers are cringing that I did not keep the horse hair and rusty springs, but frankly after spending a lot of time cleaning it out of the chair I just could not fathom putting all that dusty and disgusting stuff back in. This project took me three full weekends, remind me never to recover another chair! Hope you like it.
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