This chair above used to look brand new. Because I was smart and stored it inside the house, and only pulled it outside when we needed it.
But then, we had my family reunion in May, and I was pregnant, and getting the house ready to sell, and somehow that chair just stayed outside. During the whole, hot New Mexico summer. I'm sure if we had packed ourselves, it would have just been thrown away. But it got moved to Texas with the rest of our stuff, so I thought I ought to do something with it.
So, here it is all made-over into a pink pretty chair.
I know that those before and after pictures can make things look SO easy. And in reality, this
should have been an easy make-over. Something I
should have been able to do during one afternoon while the older kids were at school, and the 3-year old was napping.
But here's what really happened:
When I unscrewed the seat and back covers I realized that I needed some needle-nosed pliers to get the staples out. I had no idea where in our messy, unpacked garage they would be.
So project went on hold until I could borrow some from my sister-n-law.
One of the reasons I decided to take on this project was because I thought the only supplies I would need was a can of spray paint.
I only found one scrap of pink fabric that was the right dimensions to work, and it was my least favorite... but I wasn't going to spend extra $ on this, so I went with it. I did have enough padding, but the clear vinyl? Even though I had lots of it, the pieces were all 1 inch short of being wide enough (
AARGH!) So, $1.50 and a quick trip to
Walmart got me enough, but in the meantime, the project went on hold.
Then, I decided that since I was going to use all the same screws again, I'd better put them in a plastic
Ziploc baggie to keep them all safe. I was literally putting them in when one of the screws that holds the back on, fell from my hands (gravity is so cruel to us pregnant woman), hit the kitchen floor, and before I could bend over to pick it up, it rolled under the oven.
I thought about asking my husband to retrieve it. But he is much more
practical than me and would know that it was
not worth it. In fact, when he saw the chair taken apart, he asked why I didn't just throw it in the garbage. (So I knew there was no sense asking for his help on this project) Luckily, I had the other screw, so I could find one to match- right?
So that also put the project on hold until I could get to Lowe's
Now, a word about Lowe's: I think they are awesome. We didn't have one where I used to live, and it almost makes it worth the move. So, one day I packed me and the 3 year old up and we went there with my one screw. (I can't
believe I am confessing this where my husband can read it) Oh, I forgot to mention that the screw was sawed off to about 1/4 inch long so that it didn't poke all the way through and hurt a little kids back while they were sitting on the chair.
The helpful man found me the right size screw, but then, I explained how I needed it sawed off, and gave him my pathetic helpless pregnant woman eyes while my curly-haired 3 year old smiled at him. I've had wood cut at lumber stores, so I assumed you could get metal things cut too. He thought for a minute, then walked over and opened up a new hack saw, put the screw in some vices that were on display, and cut me three screws at the proper length. I thought they had a shop where they would cut it.
Talk about service.
Then it was time to assemble it. I was so proud that I had managed to find my staple gun in a box I had unpacked, and I went to work. I was about half way through re-upholstering the seat when it ran out of staples... so it went on hold again until I could make it back to Lowe's to find some staples for the gun.
To be honest, it could have used another coat of spray paint (next time I'll use primer first) but the can was empty, and after all this effort (even though by this point my husbands idea of throwing it away looked really tempting) I was determined that it was just going to get done!
So it did! The vinyl was pretty stiff, so hard to put on the chair back because it curved, but my daughter was thrilled with it, and now we have 3 little pink chairs to go around the princess table! We really needed it, because when my daughter has her 2 cousins over, they can all eat and play there!
This was a super fun little project to make. I got the idea for it here at one of my favorite blogs. there is a link within it to a tutorial.
I just played around and drew my own patterns. I wanted them to look a little Dr. Seuss-y and fun. I thought that they did. I used buttons from my Grandma's button collection that I inherited. I would recommend sewing the button eyes on before you sew the 2 halves together. I did not, and it was a lot harder!
I tried two different methods. I made 2 identical sets of 8. One set I glued magnets on the inside, like the tutorial suggests, and the other set I sewed washers to. Then I had my kids test them out. Washers were by far better. In fact, I went back and sewed washers onto the set that had the magnets.
My kids absolutely loved them. I used our set at church, where I am in charge of doing the singing time with the kids. I safety pinned the names of songs they knew onto the fish, and let the kids "fish" for what song we would sing next.
Even the older kids loved this. The other set is for someone on my Christmas list (who I really hope isn't reading this- or at least their parents aren't!)
Since I already had the fabric, buttons, stuffing (poly fill), string, stick, glue, all I had to buy was magnets and washers!
