Our home office has been neither totally finished nor totally unfinished for a while now. I recently did some organization and styling on the built-ins (here and here) and I just finished the carpentry updates to the built-ins, which I’ll share with you next week.
I have plans for some wainscoting on the walls, an update to the drapes, a reupholstery job on a settee under one of the windows, and some general sprucing…so, you know, no big deal.
But before I dive into all of that, I made a very simple update that I wanted to share with you today.
Scott and I bought four of these Colette chairs from Crate and Barrel on deep clearance as our first dining room chairs 6 years ago.
And then we remembered that we (ahem…Scott) is not always the tidiest eater and fully upholstered dining chairs are maybe the worst choice ever for us. We were also young and naive and did not Scotchguard them.
They were quickly relocated to other parts of the house and two of them have been our office chairs for a couple years now.
I think they’re so pretty, and they’re very comfortable, but I was always bothered by the clunky scraping of the legs as I would get up and down from my desk.
So I crossed my fingers and hoped that I could add some wheels to the bottom without much cost, effort, or ruining of chairs and am happy to report that I came out ahead on all counts.
I found these vintage-y casters here, and all I needed to do was drill holes in the bottoms of the four chair legs (c.a.r.e.f.u.l.l.y.), hammer the little grip neck sockets that came with the casters into the drilled holes, and pretty literally pop the wheels in. Now I can slide around the room with abandon!
I’ve got a few other projects going on right now so work in the office is temporarily on hold again, but I’m hoping to either get working on the wainscoting or on the settee reupholstery soon.
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I am thinking about doing this exact project. How are they holding up?
They’re holding up beautifully! No issues at all :)
Brilliant! Did you have to cut the legs down a bit to compensate the added height from the casters?
I didn’t – the height of my desk worked well with the chairs + casters, but you’re right that you would have to trim the legs if the desk height was lower!
These are great, how thick are the legs on these chairs? I have a chair but the legs are only about an inch thick at the bottom and im afraid these wheels won’t fit.
What a great idea! I am a full time RVer whose dining chairs double as desk chairs for the two of us. I think I will (well, GET will) do this!
I want to do this exact project, but I’ve had trouble finding casters small enough to go in the legs of my dining room chairs (which look about like yours). Do you remember where you got these casters? Thanks!
There’s a link in the post, but here it is so you don’t have to hunt it down :) http://www.casterclassics.com/Vintage-Wood-Brass-Castors-4-Pack.html
The link seems to be down.
How have the casters held up?
Hmmm, looks like the site I bought them from is no longer active. These are the same ones: http://amzn.to/1MDxK0C. They’ve held up great, I’m still using the same chair on the same casters more than two years later!
Hi Jennifer! I stumbled upon this old post of yours today after searching for casters to boost the height of the new chair we’re using as a desk chair. Would you mind letting me know how much height it added to your chairs? I’m worried it might raise ours up too much and would love to know before ordering anything. Thank you and enjoy your weekend!
Hi Kris! It’s just shy of 2.5″ from the floor to the bottom of the chair legs now.
Thank you! I wasn’t sure how much height is actually added in addition to the wheel height – this helps!
You may use one of this casters
http://www.amazon.com/shops/nesheck2