In 1947 Tessie O’Shea, a Welsh entertainer and actress was at the height of her fame and the spokeswoman for Sebel Stak-A-Bye chairs. These pressed metal chairs with sweeping tubular legs were Sebel’s first chair. Having freshly disposed of their war time ration cards, the British were ready to come out of their bunkers and into their gardens. Their “cheerful colour contrasts” and “almost indestructible plastic finish” made them an instant success.

To this day Sebel still operates from its original site at Bankstown, NSW, Australia. Established in 1947 by Harry Sebel who emigrated to Australia from post WWII Britain, he started Sebel with his father David, a metalworker Russian emigree. The production of these chairs ceased in 1958, however with the recent revival of vintage mid-century furniture, they’ve made a comeback. You can’t pass a cafe strip from Newtown to Newington that doesn’t have a Stak-A-Bye out front!

These are mine. They stack nicely and serve well as extra outdoor chairs. The blue ones are a bit flaky and as am very pregnant it will be a while before they see a fresh lick of paint. However, with a cushion or two they do just lovely.

Pre-pregnancy I did manage to refurbish a set of Sebel Hobnob Junior chairs from the early 70′s. I bought these second hand. They were a sickly looking crayon pocked, toddler sticky set of peach chairs. After a thorough soap scrub and hose down I set to transforming these chairs to accompany the kids outdoor table. Getting the chairs to a shiny new Plastic Fantastic look was no small feat.

HOW TO REFURBISH OLD WORN CHILDREN’S PLASTIC CHAIRS

Step 1: With paint brush coat down every square inch of plastic chairs with Grip Lock Primer. I used the White Knight brand.

Step 2: Once dry I tried a variety of spray paints however found that Killrust in a can works best. Spray even strokes starting at the top and work your way across left to right on your way down. For more intense colour and better coverage of primer, spray paint evenly one coat at a time. Wear a face mask as this stuff really stinks and can render one devoid of smell for a full day. Despite all this it was worth the effort as gone was putrid peach and in came a combination of bright yellow seats with silver legs, silver seats with canary yellow legs, blue and deep Indian red plastic chairs.

This is what they look like around the kids outdoor table.

An interesting aside; Tessie O’Shea adopted Two Ton Tessie from Tennessee” as her theme song. Lyrics include…

“They call her Two Ton Tessie from Tennessee
Holds ten sweeties up on her knee
When she does, all the fun begins
When they play tennis on her double-chin.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cm7_tHLrb1w

First up is something to feed my chair addiction…. Four folding Sebel chairs, I am starting a sebel warehouse here…. How could I say no, at $3 each?

From the same place I also picked up this original art deco door pull…. No idea what to do with it…. but it is huge and cool and cost $2…..

Also in the $2 pile is this arts and crafts cigarette dispenser.. Signed on the bottom with a nifty little makers mark… You load it up with cigarettes and each time you lift the outside of the box it produces a new cigarette into the holder on top….

Two more old suitcases to sit around…. one was $5 the other $2…. They are filled with the kids board games now… which is much better than having hungry hippos on display….

And finally, I picked up the rather cool red glass paperweight for $1…. and it makes a nice silhouette on my living room blind….

So what do you think was the score of the week?

Underneath that explosion is my dinning room, and the warmest place to work with the best natural light is wasted…. So the 5 days starts here…. I also have the kids this week while the x lives it up in Sydney…. and to make things even more fun over the past 24hrs I have increasingly nasty flu-like symptoms…. But challenges are part of these challenges…. So with enough codeine running through me to start a backyard drug lab, I got stuck in…. well stuck-in for 15 minutes at a time with equal amounts of couch time….

I am not really sure how I managed this? Maybe the codeine haze has blocked out the team of helpful goblins that did this…. because I honestly have no memory of it….

Hopefully I have enough cold medication to get Day 2 done….. or the goblins comeback….