The Gathering of the Chair Legs

By Michael Erlewine

Probably more than you want to know, but this convocation of chair legs had to happen. The little commercial stick-on-felts for our table and chair legs too often turned up folded in half and stuck to the floor of the kitchen or wherever… and left a sticky residue on the wood floors.

Margaret and I decided to bite the bullet and create our own glued-on felts and pieces of berber carpet. Today we we worked with the felts. I found a little 1-inch drill press tool that cuts out 1-inch felts for chair legs. I made about 100 or so one-inch felts.

Next, we took almost all the chairs in our home and our dharma center outside on the patio and I proceeded to tear off any of the commercial felts (or whatever they are made of) and lightly sanded the chair leg ends.

Next came the more difficult task of using a dauber, as quickly as possible paint Wellwood non-inflammable contact cement on to both the chair legs AND the little felt ¼ inch felts and let them sit for about 1/2 hour or more.

Doing this to about 23 sets of chair legs and felts was a trick we could not master. It seemed the contact cement soaked into the chair legs in some cases where we could not even see the cement.

The upshot is that some of the felts fell off onto the ground to our dismay. However, given more time and pressing the felts firmly back on, the ends of the wooden chair legs finally worked and stayed on.

One-quarter inch felts are thicker than the commercial stick-on felts and make for a very smooth sliding chair across our wooden floors. We don’t have carpets except on stairs.

However, the whole process was difficult, not to mention carrying the chairs in and out, up stairs and down, and so on. We are not looking forward to doing this again but glad to have it done.

So far, the summer that is still not quite here has turned into a handyman and handywoman project rather than any kind of respite from the cold weather months.

[Photos of the patio between our home and the dharma center next door and the gathering of the chair legs. Margaret daubing the contact cement on the quarter-inch felts.]

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As Bodhicitta is so precious,

May those without it now create it,

May those who have it not destroy it,

And may it ever grow and flourish.