Beware the Two Dollar Chair

This past weekend, on the way home from the Coldspring parade, we stopped at a yard sale. There was an old chair sitting out in the yard that I thought would work in the bedroom I am giving a makeover. It is solid wood with an upholstered chair seat. The lady at the sale told me the chair was $2.00 because it was "wobbly". It did seem to be a little shaky, but chairs are generally pretty easy to tighten up. I bought the chair and headed home with visions of a dark gray chair with some of the fabric I used on the lamp shade.

This is the only photo I have of the chair before the carnage began.

When I took the seat off it was obvious that some former owner who did not know how to repair furniture had attempted to fix the wobble with nails and wood glue. Lots of little nails. The sizes varied and they were at every joint, connection, and rung. FYI don't use nails to fix furniture. Screws can tighten furniture joints but nails cannot.
The glue had been literally poured into every joint. FYI more glue is not better with wood glue.
It was obvious that this easy tighten up was going to turn into a total deconstruction and rebuild.
Just look at how happy Hubby looks working on the chair.

 He went from this expression...

to this one pretty quickly.

Hubby asked me several times how much I paid for the chair as he took it apart, nail by nail.

It looks like he is going to have to drill out a few of the dowels then rebuild it. I have a feeling that this project could take a while.
Note to self, turn the wobbly chair over to inspect even if it is $2.00.