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Happy Holidays, friends! I hope everyone's Christmas was love-filled and fattening. I know I've gained the appropriate ten pounds and so I can do the obligatory New Year's gym sign-up and work out for a few weeks until I stop caring about 'New Beginnings' quotes. I'm having such a great time watching the kids play with their loot, scrolling through pictures of friends and family, and watching all of the Christmas movies I DVR'd until I'm forced to take the tree down. Isn't it crazy how fast this time of year goes by? Crazy sad. There are very few reasons to frost cookies in January, but whatevs.
Right before Christmas I finished a bunch of projects. I painted a crummy old dresser for our bedroom (temporary solution while we're living here), a TV cabinet for our outdoor living room (I'll show you pics once I replace the pulls), a TV cabinet for a client, and some dining chairs for our friends. I'll show you pictures of all those fun projects eventually, but today I want to talk to you about the chairs I refinished; because they were annoying, and from annoying comes wisdom, or something like that.
The chairs were blonde wood with woven seat cushions. I started by trying to cut the woven wood off of the wooden seat but that proved to be really tedious work and it was destroying the chair. I decided instead to add batting and then upholster over the weave.
Materials:
1. Spray Paint
2. Chalk Paint
3. Wax
4. Batting (one bag was just right for 4 chairs).
5. Fabric (2 yards for 4 chairs).
6. Deep Staples
7. Fabric Underliner
8. New screws
Tools:
1. Drill
2. Paint brush
3. Scissors
4. Staple Gun
Steps:
1. First, I disassembled the chairs by removing the seats.
Once I flipped them over they were in great shape, and the damaged parts of the woven wood would be covered by underlining when my project was finished. The chairs were pretty rickety, so while I removed the seats I also tightened any loose arms and legs.
My assistant was instrumental in this process. She said, "Good job, Mommy," many times.
2. Next, I spray painted the chairs in a pretty light blue color. I used Krylon Paint, and I will never make that mistake again. It was so runny, bubbly, thin and drippy. I ended up wasting so much paint trying to be extra careful in my application that I could have just bought the more expensive spray paint I normally buy. Next time I will!
*Because I had so much trouble with this brand of spray paint, I ended up changing my plan for the chairs. This sort of thing happens to me a lot, and it usually works out all the better because I'm forced to get those creative juices flowin'. I sprayed the chairs very lightly and allowed the drips and spots to stay until the end. I'll tell you why later.
3. When the chairs dried completely (weather stunk, so that took some time), I dry brushed over all of them with white chalk paint. I wanted to give the chairs a rustic look, and mask any imperfections. This worked out really well.
Don't mind the Benjamin Moore paint in the picture. I used that for another project I was working on.
4. Once the chalk paint dried I sanded the chairs. All of the raised edges were sanded down to the wood, and any bubbles or drips were sanded down, too.
5. Clean off the sanding dust and apply wax to the chairs so it seals the paint in.
Now it's time to upholster the seat cushions. I was worried I was going to get a bad result because of the woven seat, but it ended up giving extra tushy cushion.
6. Lie your batting out on the floor and put your seats face down on top of it. I was able to fold the batting in half and get more booty cushion than I originally thought. I used the weight of the cushions to hold the batting in place while I cut so I didn't have to measure.
7. Fold the batting over the sides of your cushions and staple the batting a few times to the seats to hold them in place.
8. Repeat the last step with your fabric. Lie the seats with batting down on top of your fabric and then use the weight of the seats to hold the fabric in place while you cut. Instead of stapling in a few places, pull the fabric tight and staple around the entire perimeter of the seat.
9. Repeat the last step with fabric underliner. Use the seat with batting and fabric to hold down the underliner while you cut. With the back of the seat facing up, lie the underliner square you've just cut on top and staple the underliner to cover the ends of the fabric and staples. Trim off the remaining underliner after you've stapled all the way around. It should look like this when you're done:
This is an important step that I've skipped a bunch of times and always regret. The underliner finishes your seat cushion so the fabric doesn't fray and hang down under the seat, and stops the fabric from separating when you push the seat cushion down onto the chair and screw it in. It's very inexpensive so there's really no reason to skip it.
10. Press the newly upholstered seat cushion down on to the chair. I like to sit on my chairs while I screw them in so the seat doesn't move around. I usually always buy new screws because they need to be nice and sharp to penetrate through layers of fabric and wood.
How cute do those chairs look? They won't actually be living around the table pictured above. That one we found on the side of the road and did my best to refinish it. It looked like this before:
Gross, right? I fixed up the stained base and painted the table top. I still need to come up with some sort of trim piece to cover up the cracked plastic border. I'll update ya'll as soon as I do that.
What do you think of the chairs? They'll live around a dining table I refinished with a bench I eventually plan to find and refinish, near two bar stools I'm currently working on. Phew. *Wipes sweaty forehead.
Can't wait to fill you all in on what we've got going on. Lots more before and afters coming your way!! Thanks for all your support. We hope you have the most beautiful and blessed New Year. Cheers!!
xoxo
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