About a week ago, my mom and I reupholstered my desk chair in a beautiful dark red velvet fabric. The chair started looking like this after I bought it and added the wheels to convert it from a dining room chair to a desk chair with wheels…
After we reupholstered it, it looked like this. The fabric was so beautiful, but those legs just didn’t work for me.
After going to so much trouble to reupholster the chair, and after ending up with such a beautiful result, I just couldn’t stand those legs. I didn’t really like them at first, but they were tolerable with the black fabric. With the dark red velvet, they looked out of place. So I looked online for a replacement wooden swivel base for a desk chair.
Well, those things are very hard to find, and the two sources I found were EXPENSIVE! One source sold the pieces separately, and if you added it all up, it would have amounted to several hundred dollars. Of course, you can buy cheap plastic ones on Amazon, but I had my heart set on a dark wood for my dark red velvet chair.
So I started keeping an eye on Facebook Marketplace for a desk chair with a wooden swivel base and wheels. After several days with no luck, I almost settled for one that had a mid-century style (straight lines). It wasn’t what I wanted, but at least it was wood. But then…JACKPOT! A woman from a neighboring town set up several desk chairs with wooden bases, and about three of them looked exactly like what she was looking for.
My mom and I had planned to go see them yesterday afternoon, but Matt ended up having a horrible day and I couldn’t leave him alone. Then my mother asked a friend to accompany her and they went to that neighboring town to buy a chair with a swivel base. My mom said it was a very interesting place. The woman selling them has basically filled her backyard and three-car garage with stuff. Things piled on top of things, filled with more things and buried under even more things. Over the phone, the woman described it as “a place for hoarders” where she has to dig and climb to look for things. I thought she was probably exaggerating, but according to my mom, the woman is evidently very self-aware and accurate in her description.
It was quite an adventure, but he got this beauty for $65.
The chair was in excellent condition, but covered in a few layers of dust. The base rotates, can be adjusted up and down and also tilts.
The base was attached to the chair with just four large screws.
I found this interesting little metal stamp on the chair showing that it is from The Marble & Shattuck Chair Company in Cleveland.
I googled that out of curiosity and something tells me that I bought this chair for a pretty cheap price. I don’t know anything about antiques, but I think if this chair were cleaned and polished, it could sell for much more than the $65 I paid for it.
I will not throw away any part of this chair. But for now I just needed the base. I removed the four large screws holding it to the seat of the chair and then began cleaning.
The metal of the base is also stamped with the company name and location.
It looked great after I cleaned it all up! I think it could use a good oiling or waxing. The wood was beautiful when wet, but had a fuzzy appearance when it dried. But I didn’t have any good oil or wax on hand that I could use, so I left it alone for now.
I don’t know what these markings mean, but I took pictures of them in case some of you antique experts know.
This is what was stamped on the bottom of the seat.
Anyway, I needed to figure out how to attach this to my chair. As you can see, this base is quite a bit taller than the original legs that were on the chair.
So I needed this base to be as recessed into the chair seat frame as possible. I turned the chair on its back so that the seat frame was exposed, and then cut and attached some scrap wood, cut to about 1 inch square on my table saw. I placed these pieces as high up on the frame as possible, attaching them with wood glue and 16 gauge nails.
This is what it looked like with all four connected.
Next, I used brown craft paper to make a template that I could use to cut plywood. I just folded it and taped it until it fit. My sweet Cooper was the perfect supervisor.
And then, using that template, I traced the pattern on a piece of plywood, cut it out with my jigsaw, and then nailed it to the pieces I had previously attached to the frame.
I had to allow for these metal pieces to stick out beyond the top of the base…
So, after taking a lot of measurements and marking where the base would meet, where the screw holes would go, and where those two pieces of metal would land, I used a 1 3/8 inch spade bit to drill holes for those pieces of metal. metal that stuck out.
I then drilled four pilot holes and attached the base with the four original screws.
And then I turned the chair on its back for the moment of truth. I was so excited to see what it looked like!!!
It’s everything I expected!! Here are some different opinions without comments.
Isn’t that PERFECT?! I love how it turned out! So here’s one more view of the chair before…
And here it is now with its new fabric and new base.
Addicted 2 Decorating is where I share my DIY and decorating journey as I remodel and decorate the 1948 upper that my husband Matt and I purchased in 2013. Matt has MS and can’t do physical labor, so I do most of the work in the house alone. You can learn more about me here.
