Upcycled Chair

My town has two clean up days a year. You would not believe what people put out for trash on those clean up days! My neighbors last year went garbage picking, and I was envious! This year I joined the adventure. We spent HOURS driving around our town checking out the ridiculous amount of things people had thrown away. Frankly it's just an opportunity to get things out of your house for free and not have to deal with trying to sell them. So there's usually a great deal of items that can be re-purposed by someone else. Some items need a little clean up and are ready to go, others you have to have vision to see their potential. Most of my items were ready to go, but this chair, as you can see needed some vision. I liked the era/style of the chair and figured if I could spruce it up, it might be awesome. And let's face it, if I couldn't spruce it up, I could pop it back in the trash.

The first step was taking the chair apart, and cleaning up the frame. Then I removed all of the gross plasticky upholstery and the OLD cushions. I cleaned up the wood bases, cut the proper shape of the cushions. I sprayed on some spray adhesive and stuck those babies in place. Looking good already! (or so I say myself, I like to give myself positive reinforcement while I'm working on a project).

Acquiring the upholstery was really the hardest part of this adventure. I went to Joann's Fabric and found this awesome pattern, but of course is was a special order fabric. I tried to order it once but was told it could only be done on a week night because the distribution center isn't open on a  weekend, blah blah blah. Ugh, super annoying. I went again, on a weeknight, and the manager just popped in the numbers to the computer ordered my upholstery and we were making progress. I asked the manager why that couldn't be done on a weekend, and he seemed a little perplexed at what I was told. NICE! That lovely experience only set me back two weeks!

 I wanted to paint the frame a deep navy blue, but the spray paint with that color top, comes out cobalt, really.bright.cobalt. I changed my mind and went with black, looks good even if it weren't my first choice. After I had the backing of the top piece put together with upholstery nails, I screwed it all back together.

Oh note on the screws: They were old and yucky looking, which wouldn't go well with my nice new shiny chair. I poked the screws through a cardboard egg carton so they would stand up and I spray painted them black also. worked great!

So now the chair resides in my kitchen, looking fabulous. The steps fold in and out, love it! The girls think it's the best place to go read books now.