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I had my eye out for some chairs like this for so long, so when they popped up on Facebook Marketplace I was so excited! I ended up getting the pair for $100. The plan was to strip them with oven cleaner and recover the seats with something light. I’ve had the best luck using oven cleaner as a stripper on older furniture like these.
From my experience, when you see it start to bubble up as shown, that is how you know the oven cleaner will be effective. It began to bubble almost immediately, but I let it sit for about an hour. Once the hour was up, I began scrubbing with warm soapy water and one of these kind of scrub brushes. After scrubbing I sprayed it down with the hose and let it dry in the sun.
When I brought them inside I felt like I wanted them a little bit lighter. I decided to bleach them to lighten them a bit more. I just wiped on regular household bleach with a wash cloth and let them bake in the sun for several hours. It was a warm 85 degree day so it worked really well. There were a couple of stubborn spots I had to go back and sand. After that, I wiped on some clear furniture wax with a microfiber cloth as a top coat.
After this, it was on to recovering the seats. I purchased a canvas drop cloth from The Home Depot because it is a nice, thick, linen-like material in a light color that I liked. It only cost me about $13 and I still have some to spare. I just covered the existing seats and material using a staple gun.
