new life to a garage sale find

When Mom was here last month we sat in the living room with the new green window treatments and noticed that there was a lot of green and a lot of brown, but that was about it. I knew I needed a little more seating in there and threw out the idea of finding some old beater chairs and painting them to accomplish two things at once: more seating and more color. She suggested red.

I did some garage sale shopping soon after and found these for $5 each.



I'm all for mixing up colors, but who ever thought burgundy and bright blue would look good together?! I sanded the chairs down until they were smooth, leaving most of the blue paint on. I went to the local Calico Corners and was pleasantly surprised - they have a huge selection of reasonably priced fabrics and beautiful custom furniture for less than C&B, PB, etc. I found some cool ikat fabric with a little touch of the green from the curtains, brown from the furniture, and lots of new colors to boot. I picked a red paint to match the red in the new fabric and slopped three coats on the chairs. After they were completely dry, I did a little sanding around the edges for a worn effect - some of the blue showed through and I got down to the original wood in some spots. Then Margie helped me staple the new fabric right over the old this weekend and voila! Here are the final results:

Here's a close up of the backside of the cushion. It was really easy to just fold the corners over nice and tight and make them look neat on top.

One of these days we'll have the upright piano here - that will sit back in this nook with one chair on either side. I'll probably end up sitting on one of the chairs to play too so we won't crowd the walkway with the piano bench.

One more thing crossed off the checklist!