Tie Chair DIY

Another furniture upcylce craft!

The Need

So beyond furniture, there is something else I tend to collect, mens neck ties. Every time I see them in thrift stores I pick out the ones with the best colors and designs, and I hoard them like a pack rat, until I find just the right re-purpose project.

When I first moved out on my own, I desperately needed seating. I found a couple of super cheap old dilapidated chairs at thrift shops and yard sales, and on the side of the road, and an idea began to form.

While walking around downtown Manteo I saw how someone had used ties with an old chair, and I decided to take that up a few notches, and go for it!

The Chair

The chair I am going to share with you today is my generation two chair. The first generation tie chair (the white chair in the featured picture) was a hammock seat, which was really comfortable if you have a tiny butt. But I am not as small as I was in middle school… So I learned from that, and decided to keep the board, add extra padding, and make the chair extra comfortable. The hammock seat looked awesome, but wasn’t so practical.

The chair I was going to use for generation two needed a little TLC. I had to wood glue where the spoke had come out, so the chair would be structurally sound. I used lacing chord to pull it tight until the wood dried. (You can see it around the right legs of the chair in the photo above. I’ve used this technique several times, it works great if you don’t have clamps.

I then sanded down the body of the chair, which was loads of fun with all that detail on the back! (Not!) Then the chair was ready for paint. The wood was a little dark, and I probably should have used primer, but if you’ve read any of my previous furniture craft posts, you’ll know, I’m not good at remembering to do that!

The Seat

 

I knocked the seat bottom out, it was halfway gone anyway, and I painted the body of the chair a bright green. While the paint dried, I hand picked my favorite ties to go with that color. I wove the pattern on a table first just to see which ties I wanted next to each other, going in which direction.

I used the middle section of the ties, cutting off the thin tale, and the wide bottom part of the ties, and set those sections aside for later. After I got the pattern the way I wanted it, I turned the ties upside down on the table, and put the layers of extra cushion down on top, then the upside down wooden seat.

I then folded the ends of the tie up over the bottom of the seat used a staple gun to put a few staples in each end of each tie, wrapping it tight. Then I just reattached the seat to the chair frame with some of the original screws, replacing the ones that were stripped.

The Skirt

Then I went back for all that extra tie. I didn’t want to throw it out. Lets be honest, the fat end of the tie is the best part. So I decided to do a skirt around the bottom of the chair. I alternated the fat and skinny ends, and attached them with a few staples along the inside of the chair frame.

The Back

There was one tie in particular that matched the green paint so well, and was just a beautiful shade of purple, that I thought it deserved a special place on the chair. Also, the back of the chair, with the seat and skirt so colorful, looked a little bland on its own. So I decided to wrap and knot the tie through the detailing on the back of the chair, and have it casually flung over the back. This gave the chair that devil-may-care look (like when a good looking guy is dressed to kill but has his tie loosened and top button of his shirt open)!

The Finished Product!

With the final tie in place, the whole thing really came together to make my favorite desk chair!

I absolutely fell in love with the way these turned out! I plan on making an entire set of these in different colors to use as my dining chairs. I will have a powder blue chair with brown and coral ties, a coral chair, with blue and white ties, etc.

I will try to post pictures once these are all complete and I have successfully created my army o’ tie chairs!

What  are some fun things you’ve done with ties or chairs? Feel free to share below!