Monday, July 26, 2010

Before and After: Another nasty chair

A few weeks ago I gave you a glimpse at what today's "before and after" projects looked like when I brought them home. Here's a refresher.

Small handmade stool- Bargain Center, about $1
Nasty cane back chair- Goodwill, $3.99

And maybe you remember my inspiration fabric that I was planning to use?

Imagine the cushions upholstered with this fun, vibrant fabric and the wood painted in that pretty turquoise color. Wouldn't that have been lovely?! Well, there's a whole long, sad story about why I wasn't able to use this fabric. But I won't bore you with that. I just had to wait for inspiration to strike and lead me in another direction. Once it finally did, I wasted no time getting started.

The first thing I did was hose off the chair. Literally. After I removed the cushion I took it out to my lawn and sprayed it real good with the hose. It was GROSS.
This chair was not taken care of.
I'd even go so far as to say that it was abused.
Nothing was salvageable from the seat...
... so I bought some plywood and made a new one. Add to that some new foam and new fabric and a new seat was born.
For the stool I finally got to try out a technique discovered at one of my favorite blogs, Miss Mustard Seed.
I was really inspired by Kristine's chair/stool combo over at another favorite blog, The Painted Hive and thought I'd give it a try. I used some osnaburg fabric (I finally learned the name of that stuff!) that I had on hand, bought some blue fabric paint and darkened it to my liking, then taped and painted stripes to give the fabric the look of a grain sack.

Both the chair and stool were sanded, primed, then painted with a nice coat of Heirloom White. Doesn't that nasty chair already look new again?

I couldn't just paint them, so they both got some brown glaze as well to bring out all the details.







I think they look cute together, but I'm not sure I'll sell them as a set when they go to the shop. What do you think- together, or separate?

3 comments:

oops! said...

Wow, I love it! You are very talented! You do so much more, than furniture!

Anonymous said...

Separate ...love them but don't look like should be a pair footstool needs an armchair with it, but I do think the person who buys the chair will also show interest in the stool.

Anonymous said...

I love the little table.