The post about taking apart a frumpy chair.

Some people buddy up with Ryan Seacrest, noisemakers, and Budweiser on December 31st.

We buddied up with some pliers, screwdrivers, and disintegrating foam.

Yes, that's right: we spent our New Year's Eve taking apart this frumpy but one-of-a-kind $20 Craigslist chair:

With some new fabric, cushions, and paint (which we haven't selected yet because I'm not sure yet where I want the chair to go in OUR NEW HOUSE), we'll be able to transform this ugly duckling into a swan. Or at least a more attractive duckling. However, due to the lack of weather temperatures that allow us to paint outdoors without going frozen from the waist down (name that Christmas movie) or indoors without acquiring a perpetual paint-fume headache, this frumpy duckling is, right now, more like a....well, a dismembered frumpy duckling.

That last statement was rather graphic. I promise no animals were harmed in the dismantling of this chair. See, our head project supervisor Gingerbread approves of our work:

 

Well, she at least approves of the fact that we created yet another new nook for her to explore and take up residence in.

Anyway, we tackled this chair the same way we tackled the zebra one. Our process is fairly straightforward:

1. Snap way too many pictures of the chair from every angle...

2. Remove all staples and tack strips, bemoaning the person who used these nasty metal tack strips when they put the chair together in the first place...

 (In that poor soul's defense, he probably never expected that anyone would spend their New Year's Eve taking his hard work apart.)

4. Take off the fabric one piece at a time and make a list of the order (putting the new fabric back on will happen in the reverse order)...

 

5. Notice that this chair's olive velour fabric is reminiscent of the gold velour fabric we removed from this chair and wonder during exactly what era gold and olive velour chairs were popular...

6. Keep the vacuum handy so our entire living room doesn't become covered in 60-year old disintegrating foam (alas, we didn't give it a chance to ring in a 61st year)...

7. Sand the chair's frame when we're blessed with a balmy 44 degrees on January 1st (the only part of this process that we didn't complete before Dick Clark's countdown)...

8. And last, not not least, pile the pieces into the empty corner of the living room where the Christmas tree stood just a mere 24 hours before and pretend it's some newfangled modern art sculpture (hey, if a urinal on a slab of concrete can make it to the MOMA, I say our chair can, too) until we have the supplies, plan, and weather to finish the project once and for all.

Take that, frumpy duckling. We'll turn you into a swan yet. :)