messy mimi: upholstery

Thursday, September 8, 2011

A New Life for My Old Cane Chair

Today I want to share my guest post I did for Craftionary.

It all started with this old chair I found at Habitat Restore. Well, you know how sometimes you have too many unfinished projects? That's me, so I kept on walking. I bought some small thing but kept thinking about the chair. It was $10. As I was getting in my car I realized I really wanted this chair. The fabric was in bad shape but the chair itself was in good shape. I bought this lovely in May and after tossing around lots of color and fabric ideas around in my head I finally "recreated" it this month.

There were so many fabrics and colors I loved but in the end it had to be something that could work with the cane siding. There was a polka dot fabric and a Chevron one that I adored but, it wasn't happening - too much pattern and I don't want anyone getting dizzy looking at my chair! So... I decided to use the Waverly Button Blooms fabric I bought earlier and love so much. It is pictured with the cotton clothes line I found cheap at Walmart to make cording for the chair.

Then on to the paint. With this fabric there were several choices. I chose blue and was delighted to see that Valspar makes Waverly Fabric inspired paint. I bought a $3 sample bottle of Blue Sail - it was all I needed and still have a bit left for a smaller project. Amazing.

I started by turning the chair over and removing the screws holding the seat in place. I'm not quite sure why but.............

There was a board attached to another board that had a large cut out area. Made no sense to me and if any of you out there have an explanation for this I would LOVE to hear from you. Needless to say, all the old foam was tossed

And I didn't remove this tag. Even though it is pretty scary looking!

Next up was painting this baby. (I won't bore you with removing the old fabric or the gazillion staples that had to be removed. :) What a job that was!)

Once the chair was ready I used Rustoleum 2X Satin Heirloom White as a primer just because I had it on hand. Then painted the Valspar Blue Sail onto my chair. One coat was pretty much all it needed except for a few spots.

This picture (above) is with the pattern I made using posterboard for the back panels.

Monday, May 30, 2011

Chalk Painting my Lone Star Chairs

Several weeks ago I found these chairs at Restore for $5 each.

The local Lone Star restaurant was in the process of re-modelling so they graciously donated pretty much everything (chairs, booths, tables, pictures, dishes and more!) By the time I got to Restore somebody had already bought 30 of these chairs - most likely for another restaurant. I can't wait to see where they show up. :)

Anyway, I decided to try out Annie Sloan Chalk Paint in Old White and use the pink elephant fabric by Dwell I found on sale at Jo Ann's. Well, you can see by the can I have already tried it out but that story will come later!

I've heard a lot about this chalk paint and decided to splurge and try it - because it is pricey. The deal is that you usually don't have to prime or prepare your piece before painting. These restaurant chairs would be a real test of that!

Just look at the bottom of the seat after I removed it. Ewww. You can imagine what the chairs were like.

Seat had tons of staples. Starting to think I'm too impatient for this!

Yep - not dealing with this greasy stuff... So I pitched that (after using the board as a pattern for the new seat.

I forgot to mention that there is a wooden seat to this chair in addition to the covered seat that sits on top of this.

Loving some elephants here :)

As for the paint, I painted outside on a warm day and this stuff dried fast, very fast. Too fast for my messy self! I will be painting my next chalk paint project (Graphite) indoors! But I do love the feel of it and the Annie Sloan colors. Really beautiful colors. For these chairs, one coat was not enough. I am going to try priming or sanding the other chair to see what happens. I mean, they did come out of a steakhouse restaurant after all.

Here she is - not quite finished yet. Still need to add a coat of wax, especially if I decide to give it a distressed look. I might distress it, might not. I do think I will add some piping and more stuffing. And maybe try some iron on vinyl?
Testing this paint again with another project soon :)