TYVEK FEELS SO GOOD

We found this chair on the side of the road.  It had no seat at all, and a scuzzy brown upholstered back with crusty foam, and we wanted very much to bring it back to life.  I had been collecting the Tyvek envelopes I received at work for a few months.  I did not have a specific project in mind, but the material is so strong that I was thinking that furniture covering was a possibility.  Besides, it just seemed ridiculous to throw all this stuff away.













 





The construction went like this: I tore off the seat back upholstery so I was left with just the plywood base;  I cut out a seat bottom from 5/8" plywood; I bought a 4"-thick foam block and cut it to fit the back and seat, duct-taped it down, and wrapped the foam in batting; I then split the envelopes along their seams, trimmed their ragged edges and laid them out to form double-layer sheets big enough to cover the cushions, then scotch-taped the pieces in place, and drew a grid in pencil over the big sheets; P. then took over and sewed over the pencil grid using a zig-zag stitch on the sewing machine (a bonus to all the sewing: it created thousands of perforations so we did not need to make separate air-holes to prevent the completed cushion from popping); we wrapped the sewed sheets around the cushions and attached them with a staple gun.

Finally, we screwed the back cushion to the frame, laid the seat in place, and voila!  A nice looking and thoroughly comfortable chair, all in one busy Sunday.