Making a funky chair fit for the garden

I was originally going to title this post "Making a funky chair better", but I'm not sure that I succeeded in that regard. "Making a funky chair different" didn't really work for me either. Regardless of what this post is called, let's see what I did.

I started with this antique mall find, an $8 chair that was attractive to me only because of its heavy metal frame.

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Here's another look at "before":

The seat is a sparkly vinyl, reminiscent of carnival rides:

With cardboard backing and some small punctures in the seat, this is not something that could live outdoors.

So off came the seat:

Drywall screws and a bolt were holding this on. Interesting.

With the seat off, I got started by creating a cedar frame:

The entire project will use cedar, and I used thicker boards for the seat:

The back part with the legs and back support rods was a bit of trouble...

...but a little cutting, drilling, and filing and that was overcome.

I used stainless finishing screws to hold things together...

...and rounded all of the edges -- especially the front edge of the seat.

So the final result is certainly weatherproof...

...although it still looks a bit funky. Maybe sealed/stained and out in the garden it won't look so strange, but it's a little boxy and flat for my tastes, as you can see when side-by-side with the second chair:

Incidentally, that second chair had different labeling on the bottom...

I wonder what the handwritten notes indicate?

...that gave proof as to how old these are:

Only about 15 years. I didn't expect them to be very old, but they sort of had an 80's vibe to them.

Now what sort of vibe do they have?

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