A Place To Sit

Saturday February 5th.  Something that struck me as odd when driving around Honolulu was the vast amount of household objects sitting on the curb outside of houses and apartments.  Mattresses, broken televisions and toilets dot the landscape of each neighborhood.  Bulky Items is the proper term for these eyesores.  The trash people pick all of this up each week in their olde timey trash trucks but the refuse quickly amasses again.  The point of this is perhaps a confession: we've been shopping in the Bulky Item section of the island. The other day we found a chair, an ugly but free chair which we quickly and slyly loaded into the back of the car.

The original chair

This chair you see, I believed to have potential.  Yesterday I went to Kaimuki Dry Goods which, despite its name and the visions of beautiful apothecary jars filled with magical trinkets that it conjured up in my mind, is a fabric store.  They had every fabric that I could ever want, even pizza fabric (that might end up being kitchen curtains, but I really liked the carrots too).  After an hour and a half of trying to decide between three fabrics for the chair cushion I chose a Japanese print by Etsuko Furuya for Echino.

The fabric

The fabric is a thick and sturdy block print which went right along with my plans for the chair.  After picking the fabric, I went over to the hardware store to get some paint.  A few words about driving in Honolulu.  It's terrible.  First, the freeway speed limit is 55 and people really stick to that.  Second, the street names are all very unfamiliar to me and three a's in a row in any noun makes me uncomfortable.  The street signs not are reflective, and I'm not real sure that there is a street sign at each intersection.  Maggie, my GPS unit who I have a dysfunctional relationship with, just cant seem to pull herself together quickly enough to figure out what side of the street my final destination is on.  Sadly, I spend more time talking at Maggie than actual human beings on some days.

The cushion 

The completed chair

I improved the chair.  A little bit of wood filler, some sanding, a can of paint and a beautiful fabric fixed it right up for under $30 and in very little time.  Three more and a table to go, I'll have to keep my eyes open for some more potential tomorrow.