Chapter 85 - Ceiling to the Left Side Porch Second Floor, 2 Comfy Chairs

July 24th  - 25th 2014

The first thing I noticed is that the piece chart was missing for this Chapter.  Luckily, all the pieces were familiar as I had already made the porch ceilings before and the comfy chairs had the same pieces as well.  So, I slapped together the ceiling, painted the remaining pieces that needed it and installed the ceiling (which I won’t walk thru again as I had done it so many times before - at least this is the last one!).
I also had to attached a few more decorative pieces and the wooden runners for the shōji windows.  As usual, a tight fit.  But I’ll just end up having to sand down the upper piece to make the shōji slide.  At this point, I’m used to it.

Internal detail of the ceiling inside the porch

Finished porch roof.

Next was to make the comfy chairs.  I really didn’t want to use the fabric that came with the kit as it’s pretty boring.  So I pulled out the fabric pieces I had bought at Ajisai and found a neat blue.  Before I could start upholstering the chairs, I had the sand the wooden pieces and round the edges a bit.  The chairs are not stuffed - just wooden blocks covered with fabric.  So the too straight edges really don’t look that great once the fabric has been glued on (I did try one chair without rounding and didn’t like it much).  The kit came with pieces slightly raised in the center or bowed to give a more realistic look to the chairs.  But they just needed a bit of rounding out and smoothing to complete the effect.

Left side after sanding. You can see the raised seat detail. The backs were the same. To give the chairs more dimension.

After that, I had to position my piece to figure out how the pattern would fall on the “cushions”.   The easiest way was to make little pattern pieces and cut the bottom cushions first, then the back.  Course I ended up over cutting the back of one when I was fitting it but as usual, these chairs are well used so I wasn’t too concerned.  Once the upholstering was done, I could sand the bottom cushion fabric where people would have been sitting to make it look worn.  The cotton responded really well to the sanding.  I then stained the wooden arm rests and the peg legs and just waited for things to dry so I could glue them into place. 

Working on the seat cushions.

Gluing the back covering to the chairs and the chair backs to the seats.  Staining the arm rests and peg legs.

Adding the legs and arm rests.

There are areas where the cotton fabric did unravel a bit and was hard to manipulate (it’s a very fine cotton) but overall the effect is quite lovely! I like it! So kitsch hotel/motel 50’s!!