Folding Chair Makeover

While looking for houses to buy a few years ago, Señor and I fell in love with our current home. It was a foreclosure that a group of house flippers bought, gutted, and remodeled. I love everything about the house (the yard definitely needs some work though. Seriously). One of my favorite parts is the sunroom. During the summer, it’s perfect for entertaining friends. When the weather changes and fall sneaks up on us, I love to sit on the porch with some tea and the windows open. It’s just perfect.

Here’s the thing: we don’t have any seating. Well, we have a futon, but not everyone wants to cuddle on that disgusting old thing. So, I recently added “seating for sunroom” to my garage sale list. Surprisingly, I found some chairs within a week. For all 3 chairs in their glorious splendor, we paid $7 (total). Maybe a little overpriced, but I wanted them reaaaal baaayyud.

$7 total at a garage sale

They’re ugly. It’s true. All goldish and weird yellow. It’s too much. But not to worry. This type of chair is ridiculously easy to fix up. I found this idea on- imagine this- Pinterest. Go figure!

Here’s what we did:

1. First, we removed the screws in the back

Tools. Gotta have ’em.

Remove the screws. Keep them in a safe place until you’re ready to put everything back together.

Ugh. So. Ugly.

2. We Señor spray painted every metal part of the chair

We chose an oil-rubbed bronze spray paint by Rust-Oleum.

3. While the chairs dried overnight, we wrapped this fresh, cute fabric around the seat and back padding of the chair. You can find scrap fabrics at garage sales or head to a fabric store (which is what I did because I was too lazy to wait. This fabric cost me $6). Using a heavy-duty staple gun, staple the fabric to padding.

Make sure to pull it tight! Also, again with the weird hands. Where did they come from??

Staple guns are your friend.

Dainty.

4. Once the chairs have dried, screw the paddings back onto the chair.

So much better

Yep.

If you’re really cool, you could also:

• Stencil a design on the metal part of the chair
• Use a vinyl tablecloth as fabric to make the chairs weatherproof
• Use different, coordinating fabrics and paint colors

The total cost for the chairs runs as follows:

Chairs: $7

Fabric: $6

Spray Paint: $10

Total cost: $23 or $7.67 per chair (Used a calculator this time, thankyaverymuch). Not bad for some additional seating for our jam* sessions.

*Our good friends are teaching us guitar. So when I say *jam,* I really mean that I clumsily “follow” along and occasionally hit the G-chord. It ain’t pretty.

Tongues.