The Chair

Once upon a time, the Bag Lady's parents had a high chair. To the best of the Bag Lady's knowledge, they used this particular wooden high chair for all four of their children.

In any case, after the Bag Lady's youngest sister outgrew it, the chair languished, forlorn and unused, until one day the Bag Lady's mother decided that said high chair could possibly be pressed into service as a stool for her to use when she tired of standing at her easel. So the Bag Lady's father cut the back and arms off the chair, and with a shiny new coat of paint, the chair started a new life. It was used as a stool when the Bag Lady's mother was painting, and was also used for haircuts and other forms of torture...

Eventually, though, the Bag Lady's mother replaced the old wooden stool with a cushioned chair that had a back and a little swing down step, and the old wooden high chair languished again. It was relegated to the basement work-shop, where it was sadly abused; forced to submit to the indignity of being something to set objects upon when they were being spray-painted, or used to stand upon to reach something on a high shelf.

Time marched on, the Bag Lady's parents both passed away and the chair that had been such a part of the Bag Lady's life came to live in the Cowboy's shop, where it was even more abused than ever! Greasy tractor parts were set upon it; it suffered untold indignities. One day, the Bag Lady realized that if she didn't rescue it, it would collapse or be crushed in some horrific "farm accident"! So the Bag Lady hung the chair up on the wall, then forgot about it again for a couple more years.

This spring, the Bag Lady decided she needed a stool in her kitchen, and suddenly remembered the old wooden high chair. She went out to the shop and took it off the wall and had a good look at it. It was in sad shape. One rung was missing, another was broken, and the paint job looked like a Salvador Dali reject! But the Bag Lady loves a challenge, so she set to work.
Here is what the chair looked like when she took it off the wall:

Here it is from another angle:


Here she has started stripping the old paint off:


And has cut some dowels for new rungs:

After much scraping and sanding and sanding and scraping, the Bag Lady fitted new rungs in place, gave the chair a couple of coats of paint and this is what it looks like now:


She knows that it will be a happy stool now that it has a new lease on life!

Oh, and for anyone who was the least bit dubious of just how seriously sick and pathetic the Bag Lady's hoarding problem really is, here is a photo of the original tray from when the chair was used for feeding small children:
And, if you look at this next photo really closely, you can still see the faint outline of the little bunny decorating the tray!
Have a great weekend!