Crummy chair to funky chair

This dilapidated antique chair made me stop literally in my tracks. I was at a furniture consignment store, and there this was, hiding behind a thick layer of dust and frayed cloth. Heart! Nobody puts Baby in the corner. A quick bit of haggling, and this beater chair was coming home with me. The kids couldn’t understand why Mommy would bring home such an ugly chair, so I explained to them in my best HGTV-learned home improvement skills about restoring something crummy to something fantastic. Literally my two kids were jumping up and down. “We want to help! We can do it!”

Well…why not. This was supposed to have been my weekend project, but it turned into such an easy DIY project with them that I’m letting the kids help me with a couple of others. Before we headed out to the store, I dismantled the seat and handed each kid a wet kitchen rag to wipe off the antique dust so the chair would be ready to go when we came back.

We needed some paint. Our first stop, a home improvement store. Five dollars later, we had ourselves a sample size container of paint (eggshell finish) and 3 foam brushes. The sample size container was just enough paint with some left over for touch ups. I didn’t bother with primer because the wood was so roughed up that it would hold paint just fine.

We also needed new fabric and chair foam since the seat was really beat up. I don’t buy fabric often, and I was shocked how expensive the “luxe” fabrics are. My daughter insisted that we pick out a fabric with a little bit of shimmer to it, and I was cool with that. After all, the accent chair at some point would end up in her bedroom, and we settled on a piece of fabric that would run us four bucks. Not too bad indeed. We came home with 1/2 yard of fabric and a piece of 1 inch foam.

I frankly didn’t care how pretty the paint went on because I was going for a distressed, shabby chic look that would require sanding away any sloppy handiwork of my 2 and 5 year old kids. While the kids painted, I ripped off the old seat cushion and cut the foam to the shape of the seat. I wrapped the cloth over the seat cushion and stapled the fabric down underneath.

By now, several of the neighborhood kids showed up to see what all the commotion was in our garage. Within 10 minutes, there were 5 neighbor kids, taking turns painting a chair. I can’t believe how much fun the kids were having, and they were pretty excited to see the seat cushion go onto the chair. I told them all to come back a couple of hours later so the chair could dry.

Once the paint dried, I let my two year old go at the chair with his toys. I wanted more knicks and such on the wood. The boy can distress like a pro. We used some sand paper to rough up natural spots, and when all was said and done, I screwed the new seat back on the chair.

Voila! We took an ugly grandma-esque chair and turned it into something kind of funky. Not too bad for a first time at this, if I do say so myself. This turned out to be one of the more fun (and creative) things that we’ve done together. My kids are already asking what else we’re going to paint.

Next project…a Craigslisted school desk for my 5 year old… She’s going to help refinish her own desk.

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