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DIY Chaise Lounge Chairs!

Wednesday, July 27, 2011

I have had this Lowe’s magazine in my idea file box for years.  There are several great projects in there but the best project of them all has to be this Outdoor Chaise Lounge! 

I always thought I would ask my dad to make a few of them for me, but he’s always so busy. Plus he really doesn’t build furniture anymore.  He specializes in hand-turned bowls like this

If you remember, we had an awful storm back in May.  While helping my parents clean up the dozen or so trees that came crashing down, I realized that they still had all their old deck boards.  A few years back my parents replaced their pressure treated deck with the new composite boards.  See a glimpse of their new composite deck.

Here’s my big dilemma…….

The deck boards were laying in the spot that I got all the Poison Oak from!!  So I did what any resourceful mother would do….. I bribed the kids to go pull them out and bring them up by the workshop.  What?  You telling me you wouldn’t have done the same?

So I got my FREE-TO-ME deck boards but they had a lot screws left in them.  I spent the better part of a weekend working around the screws and bad spots to cut all the different lengths. 

Weekend #2, #3, and #4- Working on assembling ONE chaise lounge.  Some of the boards were a little twisted and tweaked, to put it mildly. 

The second chaise lounge went together in a couple of days!

My father even had the wheels! 

Overall I did probably 97% of the work!  I’m more than proud of myself and even mention to my dad that Martha won’t be kicking my A$$ this weekend.  ha ha! (a little humor between the two of us)

I was hoping to show you them all finished in a beautiful SW stain but (and here is your warning)  never try to stain anything when the temperature is 110 on the heat index!  My stain got super thick and icky.  I broke two foam brushes trying to apply the thick stick stain before waving my surrender flag.  I have way too many things to do this week, so the staining will have to wait until I get back from nationals.

So between recycling my parents old deck, barrowing some wheels that he would probably never use, taking over half of his workshop, and leaving out all the tools that I used for over a month, the whole project only cost me less than $50 for TWO Chaise Lounges and a month of weekends!!  Not bad.

I’ve been checking around on the internet for cushions…. holy moly…… Pottery Barn has them on sale for $125 each!  Maybe they’ll be marked down more at the end of summer? 

Labels: Woodworking