Revamped rocking chair with re-used insect screen ribbons.

A few years a go we bought a nice old rocking chair at a flea-market. After scrubbing off a very old, thick and ugly layer of brown paint, sanding and adding felt to the legs it served it's duty in the living room. When we got some other chairs for the room the rocking chair moved outside to the veranda. The Dutch wet climate and winters freeze did a quick job of cracking the wood and crumbled the woven seat. Our new dog we got this year did a last good job on that seat.

So time to revamp this rocking chair, because summer is coming!
After removing the remains of the seat, treatment with a steel brush, some sanding and a little bit of glue in the joints I gave it a three layer coating of oil.
Then the difficult part came; the weaving of a new seat. I had a disposed and incomplete insect-screen with a nice colorful look kept for this purpose. I thought it wouldn't be hard to try the same technique as was used with the rush on the old seat. I was wrong, because of the trapezium form of the frame and the width of the ribbons that didn't work. I tried it according some instructions found in some old books I have (I've got quite a big collection of how-to books and other instructional stuff) and instructions found on the internet.
Then I was inspired by this Instructable (thank you Katvanlew!) and decided to just weave it in some sort of herringbone pattern (as in this video on youtube, however I made my own variation). I'm quite pleased with the results so, let those pleasant warm and long summer-evenings come for some rocking rest!

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Garden side table with hard stone top (all re-used materials)

A while ago I found a disposed hard stone polished kitchensink top. I carried this treasure home, although it was HEAVY and I didn't know what to do with it yet, but a creative person doesn't have junk lying around, only new ideas.
The purpose came to me later when I changed my front door to a new one and combined these two thing with some hardwood I got from a neighbor (He had it lying behind his house for years, used to be the base of his garden shet) and the legs of our old pine dinner table: These had to be transformed to a very sturdy garden side table.
Here is how I did that (although I might have missed some steps because I didn't took pictures of every step.)Well, as I said. I used a very nice 180x40 cm's polished kitchen counter-top out of hard stone. I found it in the garbage. Every month or so I like to dumpster-dive in my street when my neighbors dispose there treasures. Usually it's quite a goldmine (I even found some original screen-prints of some famous artists. Being an artist and art teacher myself I knew what they were. I've sold them for a few hundred euro's!).
Another day I got these big and heavy hardwood beams from a neighbor. They had a routed notch/angle (?) in them, in which the stone plate perfectly fitted.
My old merbau wood front door provided me the rest of the frame and last I used metal angles and the legs of our old diner table made out of pine. This table has been used in the garden for a few years on the place where this new table is standing now but it was to big for this small roofed space. The table top itself I used for another interesting project about which I will make another Ible later.

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