A Vintage Wicker Rocker!

This is a fabulous vintage rocker with bones I found last summer at the end of a driveway tag sale.  I circled and walked away due to the price but that rocker was on my mind all evening and the next morning I headed back to the sale and nabbed it at half price!

The gal that sold it knew what she had and simply never got around to the redo. She admitted I was the only person to show true appreciation yesterday and that was why she let me have it for less in the morning.  

Check out the very old fabric on the floor of the seat.  This has to be from about the 1890's!  The first thing I did was put on a mask and gloves and pulled off all the very old fabric and inner stuffing fibre; un-processed cotton batting; dried hay and horse tail (anyway, I hope it was horse tail!).

 

I did not photograph the process of tear down....

 Pulling out the teeny tiny nails was not easy!  I used a very small flat screw driver to pull up the little nail heads and pliers to pull them out.  It took me about 6-7 hours over 3 days (because it is hard on the hands) to get as many out as I could get to.  I did not save the nails but now realize those are a 'vintage' item, too (but, I mangled many of them so, oh well)!

 The next step was to restring the springs.  Maybe I'll photograph that 'how-to' on a future piece (I have now done it three times).

I updated the method and used plastic zip-ties instead of string and will confess here that form worked well here and I am likely to do that from here on out!

This project is NOT finished and I need to find just the right fabrics for the cushions and promise to update as that happens this spring!