One LONG project or why I shouldn’t diy

This didn’t take a long time for any particular reason…mostly because I’m a procrastinator AND I had to wait a couple times for a friend of mine to have time to help me with a couple parts of it and since she was doing me a favor I didn’t push too hard.   Way back in January I saw some chairs in front of a house on my way to Zumba with a sign on them that said FREE.  There were probably eight of them and I thought to myself…I bet I could paint one and andtique it and make it look awesome instead of ugly.  Then I drove on past.  I wish I had stopped right then, but I didn’t.  There were a couple that had arm rests that would have been even better, but later on that day I couldn’t stop wondering if they were gone yet so I drove over to check it out again.  Some of them were gone, but there were still a bunch left.  So, I decided you can’t pass up free and I found the two that seemed the most sturdy and stuck them in my minivan to take them home.  This is what they looked like:I figured I would take the seat off and take off the fabric so I could recover the seat.  The fabric that was there looked pretty gross. 

The seats came off super easily.The hard part was getting the staples out to get the fabric off.  The first layer of fabric wasn’t too bad, the second layer was a little harder because there wasn’t much extra fabric and the third layer of fabric was really old and starting to disintegrate so I couldn’t use the fabric to help pull the staples out so it was even harder.  I had to pry them up with a flathead screwdriver and some pliers.  Isn’t my helper cute?  That’s the second layer of fabric.

This is totally 70’s fabric for the 3rd layer.

The foam was still in pretty good shape so I just sprayed some disinfectant spray on it and then headed to the fabric store to get fabric for my new chairs!

This is the fabric I chose.  I’ve had my eye on this fabric for awhile.  I didn’t know what I was going to do with it, but I loved it and figured next to making pillows out of it this would be the best idea.  So I bought the fabric and then I had to go figure out what color to paint the chairs. 

Emily helped me to decide and we rolled the dice on the color Jade by Krylon (yes, I spray painted them)  I was really nervous so I read a bunch of tutorials on a couple of the diy blogs I read regularly.  Then I had a few more questions so I did a stalker thing and emailed Brooke from All Things Thrifty with some of my dumb questions.  She was SUPER nice to email me back answers quickly. 

FINALLY in APRIL, yes, that’s three months later it was warm enough outside to paint—‘cause we don’t have a garage.  (at least this time I had the excuse of waiting for the weather).  My only advice for you if you are doing this for the first time is buy way more paint than you think you need, because I had to go back to the store for more primer and more paint.  Brooke wasn’t kidding when she said I might need a little extra since I’ve never done this before.  Primedfirst coat of color

Second coat of color.  After they dried they came inside and sat in my basement next to the treadmill for a few months.  I forgot to take pictures when I glazed them, but I love how they look now that they are glazed.  All the details in the back of the chair are visible and I like it.  I think I probably glazed them in May or June, but honestly I can’t remember for sure. 

At this point I was waiting for my friend to cut me new chair seats because the ones that were in there were starting to crack and I had visions of someone sitting on the chair (namely, me) and having it break and then they’d get teased forever about breaking the chair…anyway.  My friend is a busy girl so it took awhile to get the chair seats back and then when I got them I realized I needed to borrow a staple gun..so I had to track one of those down.  Then, for no apparent reason it quit working (ahem, user error) and I couldn’t figure out why so I had to borrow another one.  I enlisted the help of my husband to pull the corners tight for me, but otherwise I did the whole thing myself and it only took me nine months! 

I took this one late at night right after I finished them because I was so excited…night time isn’t the best time for pictures. 

Liam wanted to try them out while I was trying to get pictures. 

I’m obviously no photographer because they look way better in person.  You can see the details a lot better. Here’s a before and after.

 BeforeAfter

What do you think?  I like them much better than when I started and all it cost me was some time, spray paint and a little fabric.   Besides it taking me an embarrassingly long amount of time to do such a simple project I think it was a success.  What’s the longest you have taken to finish a project? 

I’m off to find  a home for my new chairs!