My wife Anita has been repurposing old furniture and selling it in an antique store the past few months and often the repurposing requires upholstery work. A few days ago I was out-of-town and the upholstery stapler she was using kept failing. She called me on the phone and told me the driver would not retract when she shot a staple out of it. The stapler was a twenty-five year old Senco J tool that I bought for $5.00 when I worked for Senco so the fact that the driver gave out was no surprise. I told her that they probably don’t make parts for it anymore and she would be better off just buying a new gun. So she ends up going to a local Senco dealer and buying a SFW09 for $110 and she was back in business.

She uses the gun to upholster chairs with new fabric. This cloth is nothing more than a 10′ x 12′ painters drop cloth she bought a Lowe’s for $5.00. She washes the fabric then paints words on it with stencils. The result is quite impressive with the seat looking like it was upholstered with expensive $35/yard fabric.

The chair is for her sewing desk she’s been working on the past few weeks. The desk is the same desk I wrote about a few months ago about having to remake the feet.

https://mvflaim.wordpress.com/2012/09/16/repairing-a-desks-legs/

The desk was painted with chalk paint and the top was painted with enamel. She originally stained the top which I thought looked nice but she didn’t so she redid it. Regardless it still came out really nice with the total cost of the desk and chair under $100.

This how the feet finally turned out. As you can see, you can’t even tell they’ve been remade.

As far as the J tool goes. It was connected to the compressor but the compressor wasn’t on. So as she kept firing staples, the compressor gradually ran out of air and it prevented the driver from going back up into the piston. Oh well, at least now she has a gun that will last longer and give her more power than the old J tool. Oh I forgot to mention, I’m not allowed to touch her new stapler. : (