Wednesday, August 27, 2008

The Fabulous Cow Chair! (and Moose Skull)

Here is my latest project....the Cow Chair! It was an old 1960's teak chair that was sitting in Rich's parent's basement, rotting away. It was dirty and covered in a boring burgundy fabric. It was originally covered with an orange, black and gold plaid, but 20 years ago it was re-covered with the plain, burgundy polyester. The teak legs looked great though, so I knew we had to salvage it.I originally wanted to use REAL cowhide, but that is VERY expensive. Instead, we found some fake, fuzzy cow print (on Ebay) that we felt would do the trick.
So here is the finished project which took me approximately three days to complete. It isn't perfect, but it looks SO much better than it used to!
Here's something else that took a few days.....the moose skull!
After soaking it outside, (covered with a metal garbage can at night to keep raccoons away) for roughly three days and nights in "Amaze" and warm water, it became easier to clean. The moisture softened the beef-jerky-like flesh that still hung onto the back of the skull where the cervical vertabrae were still clinging on. I STILL had to use a sharp X-acto knife to cut and scrape it off.
At this point, the skull smells like a dead dog, and it's not very pleasant to be around...which is why I kept it outside.
After rinsing it with the garden hose for a while, I soaked it in a very diluted mix of bleach and water. I soaked it in the basement overnight, then left it in the sun for most of the day. Flies kept on coming around, so I put it on my sunny livingroom windowsill.
It doesn't look pristine, but believe me, it's a LOT cleaner now, and I don't mind having it in the house. I used too much bleach on a deer skull once, and now it's crumbling. I didn't want to make the same mistake with this one. The best way to learn how to do something is to do it more than once. (Also reading tips from others on the internet and in books) That's how I've learned how to do a lot of my hobbies and crafts.

2 comments:

Willy Ashworth said...

Cool cow chair!

Marvelous mini!

Always fun to visit here.

Hope you are well.

Suzanne Dargie said...

Why Thank You Willy! You're the only one to comment on my upholstery job so far! Maybe I should dig up a "before" photo.