Chaising the lounge

In a previous post, I told you about our oft-repaired chaise lounges. saw wood rot on one leg, but couldn’t tell how much was rotten.

The wood rot on the leg was so bad that Hubby finally amputated them both. This drastic solution is not one that we can repeat, but drastic problems do require drastic measures.


The chair looked very sad without either of its front legs.

We also took the opportunity to add backer boards to strengthen the frame. We also wanted to add a piece to the front of the chair to both lengthen it and give it more stability. Previous front piece was so rotten that it nearly fell off in my hand. Since it was between the side frame boards, I thought that perhaps the lack of airflow might have hastened the rot. Hopefully leaving the ends exposed to air will prevent or slow rot in future.

Hubby cut the scrap wood to size. We had salvaged some boards from a construction site, including some 2x4s that had been screwed together. That gave me an idea. I decided to screw together two boards for the legs, giving them more stability.

I painted and primed all the boards. Original builder only painted and primed the surfaces that showed. I hope that priming and painting every surface will at least slow the rot.

I had nearly finished painting when I ran out of paint. The paint company had changed the paint color to something more like blood red instead of our signature brick red. Even though the color difference does show, I just didn’t feel like repainting everything. I am very meticulous, but sometimes a person has to decide what amount of effort is just too much.

Original builder had used carriage bolts to attach the legs, which proved impossible to remove. The nuts merely spun around instead of coming off. We used 6-inch long socket screws instead. We attached the replacement slats and the end piece with deck screws.

After all that work, we surely did enjoy lounging in front of our fire pit! Enjoying our outdoor living room again (below) is such a pleasure.