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How to Cut a Chair in Half

We have a chair in our bedroom.

Mike likes to sit in the chair, but often times he can't because it's filled with clothes.

This makes Mike sad.  We need a better place to set clothes!

Dress boy (dres boi) n. A place to set out clothes.  Often for the next day.  Very European of you.

We didn't know what a dress boy was until we saw this image on Ikea Hacker.

Normally, dress boys look a little more like this:

But we loved the creative take on cutting a chair in half, especially since cutting our night stand in half!  We found a lot of cool images of half-chair-dress-boys and decided it would be fun to make one!  For a few weeks we scoured all the local Goodwills, Turnstyles and antique stores for chairs we could slash in half.  I wanted a chair with unique detail and some history behind it.  We kept finding chairs that had vertical rungs, padded seats, rattan seats, or were actual antiques in great shape and we just couldn't bring ourselves to cut a beautiful antique chair in half.  A neglected, slightly unstable antique chair is what we wanted, but our impatience got the best of us.  Hello Ikea Bertil Chair.

Yes we bought a perfectly good chair and cut it in half the next day.  It was $20 and cheaper than some of the no-so-perfect options we found elsewhere.  And it was raw wood so we didn't have to sand a bit!  

How to cut a chair in half in 10 easy steps

1)  Put the chair together but don't tighten the screws all the way, just enough to hold everything in place.

2)  Decide how far you want the chair to stick out from the wall.  I believe we measured 3-1/4" in from the legs.  Mark your spot on the side of the seat and line up a level (or something heavy hanging from a string) with the mark.

3)  Draw lines along the level (or string) along the two horizontal pieces of wood.

TIP: Now is a good time to make sure those bottom horizontal pieces are taller than your baseboards.  If they're not, you'll have to cut them shorter so they fit.  If we wanted to put the chair on our main level we would have had to modify this further since our baseboards are almost a foot tall downstairs and a mere modern 4 inches upstairs.

4)  Do the same thing on the other side of the chair.

5)  Disassemble the chair to make it easier to cut the pieces.

6)  Cut the horizontal pieces from both sides of the chair.  Use your saw of choice, whatever can cut a straight line.  Mike had just got a power miter saw for framing the basement and wanted to play with it.

7)  Cut a straight line across the seat of the chair.  Again use whatever saw can cut a long straight line.  A circular saw would be best but we don't have one (yet!?!) so Mike used a jig saw.

TIP:  When cutting a straight line with a jig saw or circular saw, clamp a straight board along your line as a guide.

8)  Reassemble the back of the chair and tighten all the screws.

9)  Use the pre-drilled holes to screw the seat to the horizontal supports.

10)  After painting it the color of your choice, install L brackets to connect the underside of the chair to the wall of your choice.

After

We gave our half chair a coat of white paint (and of course oil-based primer).  Here's how it turned out.

What do you think?  Are you searching your house for a spot?  Mike keeps telling me I don't need one in multiple locations around the house.  I guess we'll see what happens after garage sale season!