The Saga of Our Mid-Century Sleepy Hollow Chair

This spring, we found ourselves a tad flush, which meant, of course, that the money must be spent ASAP. We decided to restore some mid-century pieces, one of which was this chair (the cat stayed home). Apparently, this is what's known as a "Sleepy Hollow" chair. Here's one definition: "An armchair of the mid-19th century, sometimes on rockers, having a single piece forming a high upholstered back and a concave upholstered seat." While it's clearly more from the mid-20th century, it's definitely got that cool "single piece" aspect going for it.

I'm showing it off because its fantastic looks are a stark contrast to the way it looked when we first saw it: The poor chair had sat out in the middle of a courtyard at an antiques shop, in the midsummer sun and through several rainy days and nights. Because it isn't an Eastlake or a Duncan Phyfe, the shop owners held it in such low regard that they wouldn't even bring it indoors.

Our furniture doctor of choice is always Hank Tosh of Tosh Mahal (see my earlier post to learn more about Hank and what he does). Taking stuff to Hank may seem like a weird way to get your kicks, but nothing is more fun than bringing a thing of beauty back to its glory. And Hank seems to feel the same way, because he is truly a master at it. And he's intrepid.

He had to be, as it turned out. He does a much better job at explaining exactly what had to be done to restore this chair on his blog. Check out the before pics and read Hank's blow-by-blow account of the surgery, if you're like us and you love to geek out on this kind of stuff.

Vinyl Tile and Mid-Century Floors in Fort Worth

Lots of people struggle with what kind of flooring to put down in a mid-century-modern house. When we bought our house and renovated it in 2006, we decided to go with vinyl composition tile -- some people call it commercial vinyl tile, others call it vinyl commercial tile, VCT, CVT. It's basically the same stuff we all remember from school. One of the coolest things about it: There are scores of colors and limitless color combinations. (We had asked the installers to use a random pattern, but, as with so many things that happened during the renovation, he wasn't really listening ...)
I had to share these pics with you to show you how great it can look when it's stripped, waxed and buffed. We use a company called Jackson Quality Janitorial here in Fort Worth. We didn't get any kind of price break for sharing this info., we just like the work they did. And Lewis Jackson is hands down one of the nicest guys we've ever had cross our MCM threshold.