Weekend project done! The $2,000,000 chair makeover

Two years ago, I came across this chair on Kijiji:

It was one of a set of four. It looked like it was in pretty rough shape, but I loved the circle motif on the back. I got in touch with the seller and went over to her place to check out the chairs. Even though the finishes and rattan seats had seen better days, they were surprisingly sturdy and comfortable. I offered her $80 for the four chairs – SOLD!

  

I initially thought I’d paint them, but when I posted about them over at DesignTies, my friend Tareq suggested staining them a dark colour. I really liked that idea – until one of our dogs decided to chew the front legs on a couple of them. ARGH! I decided it would be better to sand, prime, and paint them. So a few months later (see, I procrastinate!) I started sanding. Then I got bored of sanding and didn’t touch them again for about a year (see, I REALLY procrastinate!) And then this past January, I wrote up a list of projects that I had to do this year – and these chairs were right at the top. I got back into the sanding groove, and had the chairs sanded and ready for some wood filler & priming.

Then the next thing I knew, my sanded chairs looked like this:

WTF?! Hubby had taken it upon himself to dismantle all the chairs because he wanted to get all the little nooks & crannies properly sanded because he really wanted the chairs stained. ARGH! He did the wood filler and some minor repair work, I did MORE sanding, and finally all the chair pieces were ready to be stained. We already had a nice dark brown stain for another yet-to-be-completed project, so that’s what we used.

A couple of the chair backs were damaged, so I thought I’d just remove the backs and replace them with upholstered pads. But again, hubby, decided to make things more difficult. This is probably why projects around here take so long to finish! Hubby used one of the existing chair backs to recreate the design using laminated wood. He came up with all sorts of creative ways to bend the wood to follow the curve of the chairs – there was wood soaking in the sink, and wood baking in the oven… I’m really not sure what worked, but he managed to bend the wood and create two pretty good replicas of the originals. Sorry, I forgot to take pics of this part of the process, but this is what the stained back pieces looked like:

Then hubby put the chairs back together and varathaned them. And this is how they came out:

Whoops, caught a couple of furballs in the shot – ignore please!

And now I can show you what these fabrics are for!

The old rattan seats were in really bad shape, so I wanted to replace them with upholstered seat cushions. The chairs are going up in the loft around a games table (another in-progress project!), so I wanted a fabric that would tie in with Charles, our orange sectional:

I liked the circle fabric best, hubby liked the beehive fabric best. So I decided to do two seat covers in each fabric. Compromise at its best :-)

Hubby cut four pieces of plywood and 2” foam to size.

Then wrapped them with batting and the fabric.

The handy dandy power staple gun!

Folding the corners was tricky. Our technique could be better, but they came out OK.

Voila! And yes, we spent a lot of time lining up the patterns just right!

Here’s the original chair with the rattan seat again:

And the new and improved version x 2:

And all four chairs done up in their new outfits :-)

Cost breakdown for all four chairs:

• Chairs: $80.00
• Stain: Already had, no cost
• Varathane: $7.79
• Foam: $19.99
• Batting: Already had from another project, no cost
• Plywood: $13.85
• Fabric (1.75 yards): $52.80 (with designer discount)

Grand total: $174.43

Cost per chair:  $43.61

Seriously – less than $50.00 for each solid wood chair. Mind you, it DID take two years to transform them, including hours and hours of sanding, which brings the price per chair up to about $2,000,000.00 each ;-)

I’m linking my chair makeover up with Metamorphosis Monday over at Between Naps on the Porch. Be sure to stop by Susan’s place and check out more design makeovers. (Party starts at around 9:00 tonight). Also linking up to VIP Party #6 at Designer Garden, a new-to-me blog party filled with lots of great makeover projects.

If you want your home to reflect who you are and what you love, drop me a line for an in-person or online consultation.