Mid-Century Modern Chair Makeover

It’s National $5 Chair Makeover Month! What, hadn’t you heard? Ok, I may have made that up. But it feels like it in our house! I painted a $5 desk chair for our daughter last weekend, and then I turned my attention to this $5 mid-century modern chair that caught my eye because of the metal work on the back.  Isn’t the seat pretty? I thought about keeping it that way.

And then I thought the tape might scratch my butt. So I changed it.

If you haven’t tried to make over furniture before, I’m telling you, there’s no better time than National $5 Chair Makeover Month. (Again, that might be a made-up thing.) Seriously, though, chairs are the easiest pieces of furniture to make over, in my opinion. For this one, I unscrewed the seat from the frame and removed the old cushion and its vinyl cover with the help of a utility knife. I was left with just a rusty chair frame and a plywood seat. Then, I sanded the frame with a sanding sponge to remove the rust and wiped it down with a damp cloth to remove dirt and dust. Next, I sprayed the criss-cross back with gold paint. When that was dry to the touch, I covered that part with a garbage bag and lots of painter’s tape, and sprayed the rest of the frame with Rustoleum’s gloss white enamel. While that dried, I worked on the cushion.

First, I traced the plywood seat onto 1″ foam and cut that out. I placed the foam on the plywood, then laid a piece of cotton batting on top. I flipped the seat over and stapled the batting to the back, pulling it taut constantly, and trying to keep wrinkles around the edge to a minimum. Then I repeated that process with my navy ikat fabric, making sure that the pattern was centered first before I started to staple.

When the frame was dry, I screwed the reupholstered seat back on and bodda-boom-bodda-bing…it’s a new chair! I’m using it as my desk chair, but it looks kinda good in our bedroom, too.

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