A good while back - I can't even remember when, maybe last summer? - my mom and I stopped by a second-hand furniture sale on the side of the road and scooped up these two chairs.
Pretty grody in that condition, but they had decent lines so we knew we could spruce them up. I don't remember how much we paid for them - maybe $20-ish? I do remember we talked the seller down from the original price, but not quite as low as we wanted. As our typical fashion, we didn't even have a plan for them, but we bought 'em anyway!
Fast forward lottsa months and I finally got around to refinishing them. It wasn't hard at all. I found some spray primer in the shop, so I skipped the sanding step completely (such a rebel!) and misted them with the primer. Then it was just a matter of slapping on paint and recovering the seats.
Oh, and obviously since I was working on them, we'd figured out their purpose. As with every other project these days, they'd head to the beach house. Every bedroom needs a chair for you to throw your clothes in, right?
The first one got painted green and ooooh-wee! was it a rough shade of green. Kinda like green pea baby food or something. This picture really doesn't show off it's nastiness.
Can I just interrupt real fast and say that I hate, hate, hate painting chairs by hand? All those legs and spindles and slats are torture. This would've been an ideal candidate for some spray paint, if only I'd had some in green and the weather had been nicer. The green pea color didn't make me enjoy painting it any more, either.
I almost completely ditched the project and said to heck with it, but I decided to give it one last effort and rub some glaze on it, hoping it would tone down the green peas. Luckily, it did. The picture below shows off the glaze the best.
This chair, we decided, will go in the downstairs bedroom with the yellow dresser and this painting. I used the fabric we picked for the curtains to recover the seat. No fancy reupholstery tricks here - we just popped the seat off, added a layer of batting, wrapped it up like a present in the fabric, and staple-gunned it down. Here's the finished product.
(Yes, I used the garage door as the backdrop to my photoshoot. I was looking for a background that wouldn't be too distracting. Our neighbors, I'm sure, think I'm totally weird.)
Here's a close-up of the fabric.
The other chair was done pretty much the same way, except minus the coat of glaze. It got coated in glossy white paint and will go in one of the jack-and-jill bedrooms. The fabric on the seat is the same fabric from the shower curtain my mom made for that bathroom.
A close-up of the fabric on this one.
Just for fun, let's go back to the before shot...
Yea, pretty sure I like them better now.
Which do you like better, the white or the green?