What to Do With a Broken Chair

Fix It

• Many damaged chairs can be fixed rather easily. For example, for a common chair arm break, all you need to do is apply some strong wood glue. Simply drill a small hole with your power drill, drill the screw into the chair's base and fill in the cracks and screw with a wood filler. Once the wood has dried, you can stain the wood or use a furniture marker to match the color.

Art Project

• You can use pieces of the broken chair --- or the entire thing --- to create a work of funky sculptural installation art for your home. Cover the broken chair in colored paper mache, and suspend it from the ceiling using transparent wire. Alternately, remove the seat, turn the chair so that the legs are sticking up in the air and mount the seat on the legs of the chair with wood glue so that it is jutting forward. Use the protruding seat as a canvas to paint a picture or as a supporting frame for a beloved photograph, which can be applied to the surface using strong glue.

New Furniture

• With a little ingenuity, you can transform a broken chair into a new piece of furniture. For example, if the back is partially broken on a wooden chair, saw off the rest of the back and transform the chair into a small bedside table or a footrest. Alternately, fashion your broken chair into a step stool, a bed for a cat or dog or a mini-chair for your children.

Recycle

• Even if you do not have any immediate ideas of what to do with your broken chair, you can surely use the parts for future building projects. In fact, you might even get ideas while you are in the process of deconstructing the chair's remains. Break it down and take it apart, doing your best to preserve the usable parts that remain. For the parts that are broken beyond repair, recycle them rather than throwing them in the trash.