MOTORHOME MODIFICATIONS *C* Chaises and Chairs for Camping

I am going to start off the new year with posting three of our motorhome modifications at a time. I will post repairs, modifications, or neato things we have found for RVing.  I have lots of pics in my files so I will do them in alphabetical order.

Underneath that stuff, I will post my regular daily stuff..... kinda sorta fun, eh?

So here it goes, we are up to the letter C now!

MOTORHOME MODIFICATIONS 

STARTING WITH THE LETTER C

Chaises and Chairs for Camping:

Camping means relaxing.. and that is just what we do!  These zero gravity recliners are soooo comfortable, and we really like them enough to make space in our basement compartments to take them along.  They take up a LOT of room because they do not fold up very flat. But they are worth it for sure.

We bought them about 8 or 9 years ago when these style chairs were first coming out on the market. We got mine first and it was made with softly padded washable fabric.  There was only one left in the store, so we got a rain check for one for Steve. It took months before the store got them in again, and this time the material was a woven mesh kinda rubber coated and holds up well too.

We do not allow them near the campfire to avoid any flinging sparks or burn holes. We put them away every night, we never leave them out in the rain, and they are lasting a long time and wearing well.

We found these wonderful clamp on tables that swivel and move around for best positioning. The recessed cup holder can also fit the stem end of a wine glass!  The flat surface can hold a dinner plate, or scissors and thread and needles when working on my stuff.  The small clamping piece around the metal frame stays on the chair all the time, and the arm and tray both lift off and can be washed. The arm and tray can lay flat on the seat of the chair when folding it up and are ready for the next time it is set up. 

We do not let the grandkids sit in our chairs, or company if we can help it.  By just keeping them for us, they are kept in good shape and stored away when we leave so nobody ever walks off with them.

But we did find some nice sitting chairs for company and grandkids. They fold up really flat and we bought four of them at Walmart for about $8 each on clearance.  Works well and we have had them for about 4 years now and the grandkids all enjoy having chairs close to the campfire.

We watch out for sparks, but do have a few tiny holes in them from campfires.  At that price, we can replace them if need be down the road. But for the small space they take up in the compartment, we would replace them with exactly the same kind or find a way to sew new fabric onto the frames.

Speaking of frames... THESE are the favorite chairs for us to take along to other peoples campsites for a visit, or take to a parade or picnic or family gathering. They are more comfortable than the bag type chairs.  We bought the heavy duty, taller backed lawn chairs about 20 years ago. They had the wide flat plastic webbing on them.  I cut the webbing from the frames and wove on this pattern with macrame cord.

The pine tree pattern motif was inspired by the shutters we made for our last home, a log home on the banks of the Oconto River.

I stole that pine tree cut out pattern from a logging company in the UP of Michigan. It was cut into the boards on the front porch of their office. On a Sunday, I made my teenage daughter Heather hold up a large piece of cardboard while I traced the cutout design. She was mortified and embarrassed, but I was happy and got my pattern!  LOL

Yes, we take along 8 chairs in our motorhome when camping.  When camphosting or camping with family, we are usually full of company and visitors to our campsite. Having enough chairs along is a must for us.

Our frames have broken a few times over the years, but I have convinced Steve each time to let me unwind parts of the woven sections and let him repair the frames by sliding on new pipes over the old ones, or using new stronger bolts and nuts instead of the cheaper ones they came with. They are so comfortable and warmer than plastic webbing. The backs are taller than most lawn chairs and a bit wider for the butt too. LOL

Here is a link to my blog post about the fixing of the frame and re-weaving them to become useful again:

reweaving-woven-macrame-lawn-chair

These chairs are hard to do, and are a strain on my hands to keep doing them now as I age.  My sister and I have done a lot of them over the years....

Here are some links if you would like to make one yourself :

diynetwork Macrame Lawn Chair

deucecitieshenhouse.com Macrame Lawn Chair

and a You Tube for step by step instructions:

Clock for Retirement:

Our friend Seann has this clock for camping now that he got retired. I think we need one of these. Steve has started asking me what day is it.... he has lost track now of such things since being retired. 

He really needs this, even at home, because he totally forgot yesterday was Monday and that meant putting out the trash bins last night for Tuesday morning pickup.  He does ours and the elderly widow next door.  Oh well, next week they will be doubly full!  At least it is not hot summer weather with stinky garbage? 

Actually yesterday he unplugged our illuminated bedroom alarm clock so he no longer wakes up and looks to see what time it is. He is learning to sleep until he feels rested, and getting up when he is ready!  LOL

I have two more C words to do before moving on tomorrow the D words! 

Coffee table:
Steve made this sturdy little coffee table for our motorhome.  Having items to meet more than one need in an RV is a plus. Not only is it a great coffee table, but it is a multi use item because it is strong enough to be a bench to sit on if we need an extra spot at the table.

Since this above photo was taken, we added rolling casters so I can set my table loom on it, clamp it tight and weave while sitting inside. Then if I want to get up, I can just roll it away from me to move around and pull it back up tight to the right position to weave again. Now that we put in the reclining loveseat, the casters let us push the table out of the way before putting up the footrests.

Easy Peasy! 

Collapsible bucket:
This is a handy item that we found in a camping store. It is wide enough to dip in our squeegee. It stores flat of course, but works well for quick wash that we try to do on the motorhome. Good for doing the front end windshield or back side from dirt and road grime.  I have seen some folks set them up as outdoor trash bins, and line it with a plastic bag.

Most campgrounds frown on washing your rig on your campsite, so we usually do it from our own water tank when in a parkinglot or wayside.

~~~~~~~~~

Along with most of the mid west, we are frozen this morning with glare ice and now fog and rain.  We do not have any need to get anywhere this morning. I have been ironing some pre washed fabric for quilting, and now Steve is working on cooking breakfast.  While I blog, I have Sewing With Nancy and then Fons and Porter Love of Quilting on PBS playing in the background.  Life is good. 

Yesterday we made a little change in the tv viewing in our house. A couple years ago Steve's brother had gifted us with a used large plasma tv. He had won a new tv in a raffle and didn't need two in his duplex at that time. It was really huge and took up a lot of space in our small livingroom.

Since we rearranged the livingroom a while back, we swapped it out with the smaller tv up in our bedroom which fit the corner better. 

The huge plasma went up to our bedroom, but we really didn't need one that big up there.  It does take up a lot of space.  Our house is old and the rooms are smaller than most. 

Now that his brother is building a new house, the lower level family room could use a big tv.... hmmmmm we offered to gift it back to him when the house is done!  Regifting the gift back to the initial giver in this case! hahahahah

We were walking past the Vizio tvs in Walmart the other day and found a nice small one for our bedroom on sale, and we picked up a mounting bracket to adhere it right to the wall. We chose to put it on the other side of the room.  Fifteen minutes later it was up and working! 

Steve has a strip that he is going to mount today

 that will conceal the power cord and antenna coax

 that I am going to paint to match the wall. 

I like it better on this side of the room for two reasons: 

1. I am a right side sleeper and now I do not have to twist around in bed to go to sleep after getting nice and drowsey watching some dumb movie (with sleep timer on)   

2. The tv antenna coax comes up through the heat register from down below. In the past we had to run it under a carpet, under the bed, and then under another carpet on the other side to get to the corner where the big plasma tv was on a stand. 

All is happy now in tv viewing in our home! 

Well, breakfast is done, and the blog is ready to post.  Wonder what trouble we are going to get into today?  I have two shipments to pack up to get out in the mail... if I get them done before 1 pm I can print up the postage labels myself and have the carrier pick them up from our doorstep. No need to go out today afterall!~ 

Reweaving a Woven Macrame Lawn Chair

If you have spent any time in picnic areas or campgrounds, you may have seen these wonderful woven lawn chairs.  The uncomfortable plastic webbing is removed, and replaced with intricately woven designs using polypropylene macrame cord.

The cords last almost forever, but sadly the frames break and wear out long before the woven portion does.

My sister and I have woven many of these chairs together as a team.  Here are photos of some other chairs we have done over the years. My sister and I usually sit side-by-side to work on them while we are camping. We will call out the pattern back and forth to each other, and each complete a chair at the same time: "2 under, 4 over, 6 under, 2 over, 4 under and loop loop" !!!  Then we would stop and take a drink haha!!!

If you would like to learn how to weave the lawn chair,

here is a good link with step by step instructions: 

How to make a Woven Macrame Lawn Chair

But, like I said, the frames will break. Usually at the joints where cheap rivets are stuck through the aluminum tubing at stress points. We try to be careful with our chairs but often it's other people who sit down on them too hard and break them. When that happens, most people just toss the chairs away.  But if you have ever had to go through the work to make one yourself, you would HATE to throw away such a beautiful chair...

OUCH! The rivet tore right through the frame pipe! 

We LOVE these chairs that I made just a a year after we were married.  They were our anniversary presents to each other.  The seats are wider, the backs are taller, and they have nice wooden handles instead of plastic (that breaks too) ...  Unfortunately this style frame is not around in the stores any more. We got our original chairs with flat woven web at Fleet Farm almost twenty years ago. Then we cut off the webbing and I wove these designs for us with braided macrame cord. The pine tree motif is the same one we had on the shutters of our old log house in Oconto. The seats are all little pine trees.

The frames of both of our chairs had broken --- Soooo I want to repair the frames we have.  The only problem is I would have to completely tear out the cord and redo it again once the frames are repaired.   Ugh! 

Of course, we could try to locate new frames.  My friend Connie found me two wonderful heavy old chair frames, of the rocker style. I could remove the entire woven sections and move them over to the new frames, but the seats on these other frames are much narrower and the backs are shorter.  I don't think I can preserve the original pattern and style and total lettering of our names if I put the woven sections on the smaller frames. Thank you Connie for saving them for me.  I think I will use those frames for redoing my father-in-law's and step dad's chairs.... which are also both broken!

I still want to use the larger frames,

and would love to locate some like ours.

 We cannot locate any of this original size

in any stores anymore, nor online. 

(=== side note === my neighbor Diane 

has TWO of those original Fleet Farm chairs, 

still in original shape, 

and just sayin, someday,

hers might go missing!) 

My wonderful Steveio long ago determined that he could repair the frames if I would remove just the side cords where the woven portions are wrapped around the sides of the seat. The rest of the chair can stay intact.  After looking closely, I figured out how to remove the woven portion in order to repair the frame!

One of my Top Ten blogs that I have written, with over 3,000 views, is my blog about fixing and re-weaving the broken lawn chairs. I wrote it about five years ago when I had to repair and reweave a lawn chair due to the broken frame:

http://kareninthewoods-kareninthewoods.blogspot.com/2011/08/re-weaving-favorite-lawn-chair.html?m=1

Today, I decided that this time I will write a new blog post about removing a section of the weaving, and repairing a frame.

First I needed to go through a process to secure the woven portion of the chair. I ran a long string in crochet fashion up both sides to help secure the woven pattern. Hopefully, the cords will not slide out of order and I can easily put them back in the same pattern.

I carefully unlooped (is that a word?) the side sections of the seat.  Besides the crocheted string, I also secured them in bunches of every three loops with little plastic clips.

Now it was Steve's turn to do his magic for me!

Steve drilled out the flimsy aluminum rivets and was able to reinforce the sections of pipe by sliding in some narrower pieces of stronger conduit. Then he used grade 8 heavy duty stainless steel bolts and nuts instead of the rivets.

Look what a great job he did with his repair!

Now it was time to reloop (is that a word too?) and secure the cords back around each of the side bars of the frame seat.

Although I'm slowing down in my old age, my hands take a real beating when I do this part of these chairs.

I use these size N crochet hooks to do the work. Notice how they are tapered down some before the hook portion? Some brands of crochet hooks are straight. Those are more difficult to work with.

I tied the original starting cord on in the lower right corner and started to restore the loops back in their original places.

My Oh My----  this really hurts my hands! I can only do a few loops at a time before I need to take a break. Here is a short YouTube video I made of how I actually do the looping and tugging with the hooks. Now you can see why it hurts my hands so much.

Getting Started--- first three loops done

Halfway There

I worked on it on again off again all afternoon and finished it up right before suppertime.  When the final portion is tugged and pulled through, then you tighten up the knots and flicker a flame from a lighter over the knot.  It melts it just enough to secure it without burning it all the way through.

And there you go, the chair is finished!

This chair was Steve's chair, of course. Mine yet needs to have a small section of the frame repaired at the hinge before I can finish it too.

~~~~~~~

Note--- I am writing this blog while we are camping at High Cliff State Park this weekend.  Situated on the northeast shore of Lake Winnebago, halfway between Milwaukee and Green Bay, WI.  Ahhhhh  what a nice place!

It's great to camp here, and we are subbing for the current hosts today for a few hours while they attend a birthday party. We are the camphost coordinators for the park. We train and set up one month long stints for hosts for the camping season.  Steve has such a short commute back to the campgrounds from the shop. For those readers who do not know, Steve is also the Facilities  Maintenance Specialist Advanced state park employee here.  But he is known as The Fix-It Guy here at the park!  LOL 

Campfire is ready for company with our other chairs around it 

(we try to save our woven ones for just us....)

We picked up some new patio lights for our motorhome.  World Market has them all at 50% off plus a coupon for 15% additional off.  It's a nice long string of 30 lights and is longer than our whole awning.  Often patio lights are short strands of 10 and you need 2 or 3 strands connected to complete the whole awning.

The dogs are happy to be camping too,

lots of new places to sniff! 

We had over Steve's brother Pete and wife Cindy for dinner and a campfire last night. We made BBQ ribs, sweet corn, and salads. Food tastes so much better when cooked and eaten outdoors!

 It was a pleasant evening, and we didn't get to bed until midnight!   

Nicely, our doggers let us sleep in till 8:30 this morning... 

what a treat! 

RE-weaving a favorite lawn chair

About 12 years ago, (or best guess on the date when I look back in photos for reference) --- I wove up these matching lawn chairs for our anniversary present to each other.  

We bought NEW frames, and we cut off the new webbing.  We chose these frames as they are taller, wider and have nice wooden armrests that would hold up more than a few years.  These chairs have traveled all over the country with us, and we always fold them up and put them away each night.  We don't let them get wet if we can help it, but they do dry out fast because of the polypropylene cord used in making them.

I designed the pattern myself on graph paper, and wove them to match the shutters on our log home.

Sadly... last year... my chair broke at the hinge.  12 years is a long time for a chair to last, but I wanted to reweave it onto a new frame, so I saved it in the garage.  Unfortunately, we can no longer find that particular chair for sale anymore.  I know my friend Cella has one, but she won't part with it.  Short of breaking into her house late at night and stealing it, I had to come up with something else.

So last year we bought these Coleman chairs.  They are nice.  They have a folding table on one side.  They are okay.  But they are not the same in comfort as the woven lawn chairs.   Sigh.

Yesterday, after seeing Steve's chair also waiting in the garage for it's partner to be fixed, I took my chair into the house and decided it COULD be fixed with a bit of effort between me and Steveio.

Sooooo ......

I didn't know if Steveio would have to remove the entire three sides of seat frame, 

or if he could just replace the one side.  Just in case, I preserved the entire woven seat portion.

The blue yarn is just temporary to hold the woven pattern into place 

while the frame is being worked on

Once I had the pattern preserved, 

then Steveio took the chair out to the garage and worked some magic! 

Next, it's my turn-----

Doing these chairs takes a lot of *OOMPH* and needs a lot of strength in the hands 

to pull each of the cord loops through each of the previous loops.  

I think I have *retired* from my chair-weaving days, 

so please don't email me to ask me to do one for you, okay?

I think we will still keep the Coleman chairs with the side tables in the motorhome for "company" ... 

Also we have our two Ultimate Relaxing Recliners for resting and relaxing in.   These type of lounge chairs are not good for around the campfire as the sparks could hit around the ankles and burn holes in the chairs.  But they sure are nice for resting in!   Or sipping wine?

Back to the woven chairs...

Between my sister and I, we have woven many many of these lawn chairs... 

here are pics of just a few of them over the years and some of Steve's folks' chairs too

These chairs are made by a technique that uses macrame cord (the braided is better to use than the twisted)  and two big heavy metal size K crochet hooks.  By using graph paper to plan out a pattern, one can make almost any design.  They are very comfortable and warmer to sit on around the campfire at night, compared to the plastic strap or webbing types of chairs.   We use the heaviest frames we can find.  Usually the round metal pipe type frames last longer than the lighter weight square tube aluminum type frames. 

If you would like to learn about how to make these type of lawn chairs, 

here is a website link with more information:

http://www.kingskountry.com/how-to-make-a-macrame-lawn-chair.html

.