Kick Out The Slats

Sydney Morning Herald

Thursday July 27, 2006

Doug Anderson

Are our backsides getting soft? Doug Anderson says there is nothing wrong with a bit of recycled hardwood to sit on outdoors.

Decks are perhaps the most common addition to homes improved by renovators.

The choices available today are amazing: poolside cabana equipment, weatherproof garden seating, patio settings and veranda recliners to help us enjoy that marginal existence between indoors and out.

When toilets came inside, kitchens began to move out - and why wouldn't you barbecue on the deck or terrace?

Back in the bad old days, the range of outdoor furniture was pretty minimal - cast-iron bench seating with hardwood slats by the tennis court or in a shady part of the garden.

Older readers might recall the postwar excitement when AW Frazer Ltd introduced a range of lightweight, steel-framed tables, benches and chairs with wooden slats.

Many of these hardy settings are probably still in service - not as comfortable as today's fibreglass, aluminium and poly equivalents - but sturdy.

I recently scavenged a couple of very tired examples from a throw-out and refurbished them, stripping them back to the original frame and adding new hardwood slats, one-third wider than the originals. They came up so nicely I determined to retrieve any more that came my way.

None has so far, but there seems to be no shortage of those tubular chrome steel-framed chairs with the wood-cane seats and backing. They've faded from fashion somewhat and people seem disinclined to have the woven cane mended when it breaks, as it inevitably does. There are companies that do it but these days inconvenience is frequently the preface to discarding.

I've made a test pair of outdoor chairs, using those steel frames as a basis, as well as a handy outdoor table. The total cost? Less than $10.

An office nearby threw out a rather good steel-framed desk with a laminated medium-density-fibreboard top, which I removed to leave the bare skeleton of 25mm square metal framing.

I had scavenged a couple of futon beds with 60mm hardwood slats - nice smooth timber with rounded edges. It was a snack to fasten two lengths of this decking-grade timber to the steel skeleton and run the slats up to make a weatherproof top, Frazer style. Yep, they're a trifle weighty but they're not going anywhere much and two people can easily lift and move the table.

The chairs had eight holes drilled in their frames to accommodate the wood and cane inserts. It's not rocket science to drill another eight or 10 holes and to buy a couple of dozen 6mm x 50mm cup-head bolt sets for securing the slats to the frames.

In due course the chrome will peel off and give way to a nice rusty colour. You could pre-paint, stain or oil the slats if you are so inclined but the weathered look suits me.

© 2006 Sydney Morning Herald

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