The first order of business was to remove the slip seat, knock the frame apart then glue everything back together. With the frame reassembled, I tacked the seat removing the existing cover. In this case it was simply plastic over a scant layer of cotton batting. I replaced the cotton with a sheet of 1" foam covered with 1" of polyester batting. Using a lovely patterned fabric remanent resulted in a very nice seat.
The amount of time that went into this project included about an hour to recover the slip seat, and about 5.5 hours dealing with the frame restoration. After the frame was back together I cleaned (and removed as much of the paint as I could) then stained the entire frame using Howard's stain, then applied a wax and polished. Like magic, that really brought the chair back to life!
Dianne later sent me an email that I'd like to share part of here, "Russ, the chair is beautiful, you do fantastic work? we are going to leave it in our sun room for a few weeks so that we an admire it!" And you wonder why I'm enjoying this hobby!
Here's an "after" picture of the finished product:
