Category Archives: Sachen und Zakka Style – Handmade things for home

Chair Changing

Chair Changing.

It’s amazing what can be done with an old piece of furniture!  The old saying “one mans trash is another mans treasure” (or woman)  could not be more true.  Unfortunately  I do not have any “pre” pictures of this project, so you will just have to take my word for it.

I picked up this simple but broken wooden chair as it was about to go to the dump.  I thought it still had potential even though the seat was broken in half.  The chair was otherwise solid and heavy.  So I took it home and this is what I did.

I call it my five dollar chair.  That was the cost of a thick square piece of MDF and some screws which were attached to the underside of the broken seat.

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Once once the chair was repaired and made safe for siting on, I set about improving its appearance  After sanding, I used some old cream paint which I had already, and gave it a couple of good coats.  Once it was dried, I used some of these beautiful hydrangea paper napkins to decorate the chair back and seat.  This is achieved by carefully trimming out the hydrangeas then removing the napkin backing.  After that I used a thinned wood glue to very carefully attach to the seat and chair back.

I used gold paint and a fine brush to add the gold flourishes to the surrounds of the flowers on the seat and the seat back.

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This reduced the starkness between the plain paint finish and the napkin flowers.

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Once the whole project was dried, then I finished it with a clear varnish to protect it.

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It is a good thing to have  spare chair for so many reasons, when extra visitors arrive, or for using with my sewing machine or just a pretty place for a girl to hang her handbag.

Maybe you have an old piece of furniture which could be revived with a makeover and still find some life in it for very little cost?

Have a great day!

Susie